Petersburg, Mitkof Island, and LeConte Glacier
Last night, as the light faded to silvery gray, we looked on silently as humpback whales rose from the depths with mouths agape, capturing food near the surface. Steller sea lions, cavorting alongside the great whales, flung their heads about as they grasped salmon in their teeth. And slowly, one by one, the Petersburg salmon purse seine fishing fleet made their way past, a premonition of what awaited us.
The chum fishers had already arrived in Petersburg as we prepared to dock this morning. Purse seiners, fishing boats equipped with nets designed to cinch up around a school of fish like a woman’s purse, filled the docks around us. They had returned from their two-day trip for chum salmon—one of the five species found in these waters, including coho, king, pink and sockeye.
We then visited a rare archaeological native salmon fishing site at Sandy Cove on Mitkof Island, near Petersburg. Walking among the 2,000 year old fish traps, we marveled at their simplicity and ingenuity: two long walls funneling salmon into a heart-shaped net during high tide, trapping them during low. We explored the circular band of hemlock stakes at low tide, following the same age-old cycle. Petroglyphs—carvings into the nearby rock—depicted faces, possibly claiming the artists’ fishing rights.
Nearby in town, today’s catch was already being processed at one of the three local canneries. Chum salmon roe, or eggs, were hand rubbed, boiled in brine, and broken eggs removed as Japanese buyers walked among the workers assessing the caviar. Already hundreds of pounds of whole salmon awaited on ice, ready for transport.
Float planes and helicopters carried some high above the icy Coast Mountains east of Petersburg. The ice of LeConte Glacier, one of the fastest flowing glaciers moving up to 90 feet per day, was used by early Petersburg fishermen to freeze fish. On their journey, one helicopter spotted about a dozen killer whales, or orcas—one of nature’s top predators.
In the afternoon, a walk through a northern bog, or muskeg, revealed a world much smaller but no less dramatic. We got down on hands and knees for a closer look at the carnivorous sundew plant. Adorned with sticky tendrils, sundew traps and digests insects unfortunate enough to encounter it. Lichens, such as the tiny, brilliant red British Soldier lichens, have devised their own method of catching food. In this case, a fungus “entraps” algae, which can create its own food from sunlight, and the two live harmoniously.
Back at our ship, we dropped an underwater camera for a closer look at the sea anemones and sea cucumbers living beneath the floating dock. A lone jelly floated into the feather-like tendrils of one anemone, trapped in the eternal food web.
