LeConte Bay and Petersburg
“It looks like a lake,” was one of the first morning comments about the flat water that surrounded the ship. Sunny skies are always welcome when we enter an area with icebergs, a glacier nearby, and a frigid breeze. Although we never saw LeConte Glacier, the results of its calving were all around us. Soon aboard Zodiacs, we cruised amongst the bluish sculptures. The tide was dropping fast, stranding bergs on the shallower mudflats. Knowing that they could topple over at any moment added interest to these immense cast off pieces. In today’s photograph, the berg in the background shows a melt line where the warmer ocean water has eaten away at the ice before it rotated a few degrees counter clockwise.
We visited Petersburg in the afternoon. A walk around town brought home the message that it would be easier to buy rubber boots here than T-shirts. This very successful town is within the top ten most valuable Alaskan fishing ports. There are 370 fisherman holding harvesting rights with a combined market value exceeding $100 million. The processors here employ about 1100 people during the summer, and hundreds more are needed as helpers on fishing boats. Salmon are not the only important fish here. Halibut, black cod, shrimp, herring and crab keep the economy running all year long. A few purse seiners, trollers, and gill net boats were at the docks, but most were out fishing.
Some of us explored a muskeg and took flight-seeing trips. A muskeg is a bog ecosystem that covers about 10% of Southeast Alaska. Its acidic condition allows only specialized plants to thrive. Numerous small ponds, low growing plants, and bonsai-like trees weave together in a fascinating tapestry that drapes across the land. From the air these appear as yellowish green islands on the flat areas of the dark green forest. Deep clefts in the mountains were filled with the sea. Some ended in glaciers, and others in meadows. White ice filled the upper canyons and surrounded the higher peaks and incredibly complicated topography. There is nothing like a plane flight to show how much we miss when we are on the surface. With all the scenery we did see, we still missed something.
Shortly after dinner our expedition leader announced that killer whales were near. The tall dorsal fin of a male slowly broke the surface. It sliced through the water as it rose higher and higher, swaying slightly as the water streamed off the black back. The size of the beast filled our visions and imaginations. There were five others in this resident pod with enough scratches, marks, and nicks to give us a good chance of later identifying these magnificent creatures.
“It looks like a lake,” was one of the first morning comments about the flat water that surrounded the ship. Sunny skies are always welcome when we enter an area with icebergs, a glacier nearby, and a frigid breeze. Although we never saw LeConte Glacier, the results of its calving were all around us. Soon aboard Zodiacs, we cruised amongst the bluish sculptures. The tide was dropping fast, stranding bergs on the shallower mudflats. Knowing that they could topple over at any moment added interest to these immense cast off pieces. In today’s photograph, the berg in the background shows a melt line where the warmer ocean water has eaten away at the ice before it rotated a few degrees counter clockwise.
We visited Petersburg in the afternoon. A walk around town brought home the message that it would be easier to buy rubber boots here than T-shirts. This very successful town is within the top ten most valuable Alaskan fishing ports. There are 370 fisherman holding harvesting rights with a combined market value exceeding $100 million. The processors here employ about 1100 people during the summer, and hundreds more are needed as helpers on fishing boats. Salmon are not the only important fish here. Halibut, black cod, shrimp, herring and crab keep the economy running all year long. A few purse seiners, trollers, and gill net boats were at the docks, but most were out fishing.
Some of us explored a muskeg and took flight-seeing trips. A muskeg is a bog ecosystem that covers about 10% of Southeast Alaska. Its acidic condition allows only specialized plants to thrive. Numerous small ponds, low growing plants, and bonsai-like trees weave together in a fascinating tapestry that drapes across the land. From the air these appear as yellowish green islands on the flat areas of the dark green forest. Deep clefts in the mountains were filled with the sea. Some ended in glaciers, and others in meadows. White ice filled the upper canyons and surrounded the higher peaks and incredibly complicated topography. There is nothing like a plane flight to show how much we miss when we are on the surface. With all the scenery we did see, we still missed something.
Shortly after dinner our expedition leader announced that killer whales were near. The tall dorsal fin of a male slowly broke the surface. It sliced through the water as it rose higher and higher, swaying slightly as the water streamed off the black back. The size of the beast filled our visions and imaginations. There were five others in this resident pod with enough scratches, marks, and nicks to give us a good chance of later identifying these magnificent creatures.
