Red Bluff Bay, Halleck Harbor, and Chatham Strait
Alaska is renowned for its vastness—its towering mountains, endless forests, broad waterways, and wide-open spaces. But that vastness is made up of minute details—tiny creatures, delicate leaves, drops of dew. Today was a day that had us constantly shifting our focus between the micro and the macro.
We awoke, if we had our in-room PA speakers on, shortly before 0600, off the entrance to Red Bluff Bay. The eponymous red bluffs lay to our right as we threaded our way through the impossibly narrow opening—had the ship been a cat, she would’ve brushed her whiskers. The red derives from iron compounds in the rare ultramafic rock. We towed a plankton net through the soupy water and put the results under a microscope, revealing a whole world of miniscule life.
After crossing Chatham Strait we entered Halleck Harbor in Saginaw Bay, an area that offers a wide range of possible activities. We had timed our arrival to coincide with a very low minus tide, which exposed acres of rocks swarming with the strange creatures that inhabit the rich intertidal environment. We put our guest lecturer, “Barnacle Bob” Van Syoc of the California Academy of Sciences, to work, leading a large group out into the tidepools. Strange indeed were the creatures they found, large and small: huge sunflower stars, a foot and a half across, with many more arms than any ordinary starfish can boast; an odd translucent innkeeper worm; a red octopus hiding beneath a ledge; and a black katy chiton, a thing like a giant pill bug made of leather.
Kayakers launched from the same muddy beach to cruise around a corner to the outside of the harbor, in search of human, rather than natural, history. Their goal was a pictograph, a painting made on the limestone rock by the ancient native people of the area. Such designs are thought to have welcomed the annual return of the Salmon People. They are often found on this coast in association with a village site. And this pictograph, apparently, is no exception to the rule. Sharon led a walking group to the end of the harbor, where the layout of an ancient habitation can still be discerned.
The works of mankind may be ephemeral, but at least some creations of the animal kingdom are not. The bluffs behind the beach in Halleck Harbor are filled with fossils, remnants of a coral reef that surrounded an island archipelago in the South Pacific some 240 million years ago—delivered to Alaska by the slow movement of tectonic plates. Thus this great rock formation is composed of the skeletons of uncountable tiny organisms.
After lunch, Sharon undertook to explain to us the nuances of Northwest coast Indian art and culture. Then, right after her talk, as if the images she had showed us of carved and painted orcas were a premonition, or a summons, we found real orcas. It was a pod of resident, fish-eating killer whales, perhaps 20 in number, composed of several family groups. Soon they were all around us, right next to the ship, right under the bow, first on one side and then the other. Photographers dashed back and forth until they were worn out, or until they had had their fill of orca close-ups. The whales rose in displays of synchronized swimming, twisted and turned, rolled over and over, slapped the water with their tails. “They’re showing off for us,” people said. Probably not, but it was an amazing show all the same.
But to really understand this place, you have to see not only the huge, charismatic creatures, but also the tiny, inconspicuous, strange ones. They are just as amazing and even more important. As you gaze up at the mountaintops, don’t forget to look down in the mud occasionally.
