Point Adolphus, Icy Strait, and Idaho Inlet
This morning before breakfast, we of the Sea Lion invented a new ecotourism activity: whale listening. (“Anyone can whale watch,” Art explained.) This invention was actually necessitated by the fact that this morning we found ourselves in Icy Strait, where we had intended to watch whales, in a dense fog. Amazingly, although we couldn’t see much farther than we could throw a rock, we did manage to find whales.
The first was a lone humpback. The ship managed to ease closer to the animal by following the sound of its blows. Then we could see it, sliding through the calm water in the pearly light, a strange dark shape against a gray-on-gray backdrop.
We left him to adjourn to breakfast, and when we came back on deck, a miracle had occurred: the fog had all but vanished, revealing clear blue sky. It was as though someone had opened a heavy curtain on a sunny day. Immediately we could see a group of about 10 more whales right off Point Adolphus. As we headed in their direction, the ship shuddered, buffeted by powerful tidal currents. These same currents were collecting food for the whales, as well as for salmon. More than a dozen bald eagles fished for them along a current line as we passed.
The humpbacks fed in a loose group as we watched. One whale seemed to enjoy rolling in a patch of seaweed, and kept surfacing with kelp wrapped around it. Abruptly, startlingly close to the ship, the whale breached, eliciting shrieks from the crowd. We saw other breaches in the distance and watched a great deal of feeding behavior. When we finally left our whales, we sailed through a glassy sea speckled with a multitude of harbor porpoise.
We motored into Idaho Inlet in search of another, much smaller marine mammal: the sea otter. And once again, we were wildly successful. We found a raft of perhaps 200 of the unarguably-cute little animals, floating on their backs and grooming like mad. Constant grooming is the price of survival for cold-water creatures that depend on their fur for insulation. Sea otter fur is the densest in the animal kingdom—up to 1,000,000 hairs per square inch. We watched one “little old man of the sea” take each of his toes in his mouth, one after another, to groom it.
After lunch we arrived off Fox Creek. As the staff was unloading kayaks and guests were donning life jackets, we noticed a couple of humpbacks passing through the bay. So replete are we with whale sightings on this trip that no one took much notice—until they started breaching, sometimes in unison, close to the ship. Then the operation came to a halt as everyone watched in awe once more.
But eventually we all got ashore and dispersed to our various activities. Kayakers paddled off around a corner (some saw an eagle take a fish), hikers followed bear trails through rich forest up into high muskeg clearings. All day the sun poured down on us, leaving the morning fog, like our ordinary lives, only a faded memory.
This morning before breakfast, we of the Sea Lion invented a new ecotourism activity: whale listening. (“Anyone can whale watch,” Art explained.) This invention was actually necessitated by the fact that this morning we found ourselves in Icy Strait, where we had intended to watch whales, in a dense fog. Amazingly, although we couldn’t see much farther than we could throw a rock, we did manage to find whales.
The first was a lone humpback. The ship managed to ease closer to the animal by following the sound of its blows. Then we could see it, sliding through the calm water in the pearly light, a strange dark shape against a gray-on-gray backdrop.
We left him to adjourn to breakfast, and when we came back on deck, a miracle had occurred: the fog had all but vanished, revealing clear blue sky. It was as though someone had opened a heavy curtain on a sunny day. Immediately we could see a group of about 10 more whales right off Point Adolphus. As we headed in their direction, the ship shuddered, buffeted by powerful tidal currents. These same currents were collecting food for the whales, as well as for salmon. More than a dozen bald eagles fished for them along a current line as we passed.
The humpbacks fed in a loose group as we watched. One whale seemed to enjoy rolling in a patch of seaweed, and kept surfacing with kelp wrapped around it. Abruptly, startlingly close to the ship, the whale breached, eliciting shrieks from the crowd. We saw other breaches in the distance and watched a great deal of feeding behavior. When we finally left our whales, we sailed through a glassy sea speckled with a multitude of harbor porpoise.
We motored into Idaho Inlet in search of another, much smaller marine mammal: the sea otter. And once again, we were wildly successful. We found a raft of perhaps 200 of the unarguably-cute little animals, floating on their backs and grooming like mad. Constant grooming is the price of survival for cold-water creatures that depend on their fur for insulation. Sea otter fur is the densest in the animal kingdom—up to 1,000,000 hairs per square inch. We watched one “little old man of the sea” take each of his toes in his mouth, one after another, to groom it.
After lunch we arrived off Fox Creek. As the staff was unloading kayaks and guests were donning life jackets, we noticed a couple of humpbacks passing through the bay. So replete are we with whale sightings on this trip that no one took much notice—until they started breaching, sometimes in unison, close to the ship. Then the operation came to a halt as everyone watched in awe once more.
But eventually we all got ashore and dispersed to our various activities. Kayakers paddled off around a corner (some saw an eagle take a fish), hikers followed bear trails through rich forest up into high muskeg clearings. All day the sun poured down on us, leaving the morning fog, like our ordinary lives, only a faded memory.
