Lake Eva & Morris Reef
The mention of Southeast Alaska conjures up many images: lush mossy forests, bald eagles, salmon, whales, brown bears and wildness. Today, our first day here, met these expectations and more. The first image many of us saw outside of our cabins this morning was a brown bear roaming the shore. With voices to a whisper and sounds to a minimum, the Sea Lion was able to take advantage of its 8 foot draft and get beautiful close views. The bear continued on it stroll along the shore eating what it found in the intertidal zone.
After our own bit of feeding (in the form of breakfast) we went to shore to see the temperate rainforest up close. Our location for the morning was the Lake Eva trail. Stepping from the shore into the forest was like entering another world. Enveloped in the greenness and quiet we were able to admire the tall Sitka spruce and western hemlock around us. The peacefulness of the area was only interrupted by our loud calls of “Yo Bear!” The bear sign (piles of scat) was plentiful. But, if the bears were there, they had given the trail to us for the morning. We soon discovered why bears would like the trail so much when we came across the salmon stream and sighted our first salmon of the trip.
After lunch we headed north to search for whales. The search reminded us of a popular commercial, “that was easy.” The ship had barely made it into Chatham Strait when 10 humpbacks were sighted. The afternoon is hard to put into words, but some of our behaviors help describe the magnitude of the whale watching experiences we had today. Despite the 15 knot wind, and on and off rain, many of us spent most of the afternoon out on the decks of the ship in continual amazement and snapping more photos than we thought we would take all week. We were thrilled to see the whales dive and show their flukes, but that was just the beginning. Sometimes a dive was followed by a breach. When they all dove together, we were privileged to be the observers of one of the rarest and most spectacular humpback whale behaviors known – bubblenet feeding. Ten unrelated individuals working together, with the use of bubbles and sound have figured out a way to herd fish into a tight group into which they all then lunged. Southeast Alaska is the only place in the world where this unique behavior we saw today takes place.
The mention of Southeast Alaska conjures up many images: lush mossy forests, bald eagles, salmon, whales, brown bears and wildness. Today, our first day here, met these expectations and more. The first image many of us saw outside of our cabins this morning was a brown bear roaming the shore. With voices to a whisper and sounds to a minimum, the Sea Lion was able to take advantage of its 8 foot draft and get beautiful close views. The bear continued on it stroll along the shore eating what it found in the intertidal zone.
After our own bit of feeding (in the form of breakfast) we went to shore to see the temperate rainforest up close. Our location for the morning was the Lake Eva trail. Stepping from the shore into the forest was like entering another world. Enveloped in the greenness and quiet we were able to admire the tall Sitka spruce and western hemlock around us. The peacefulness of the area was only interrupted by our loud calls of “Yo Bear!” The bear sign (piles of scat) was plentiful. But, if the bears were there, they had given the trail to us for the morning. We soon discovered why bears would like the trail so much when we came across the salmon stream and sighted our first salmon of the trip.
After lunch we headed north to search for whales. The search reminded us of a popular commercial, “that was easy.” The ship had barely made it into Chatham Strait when 10 humpbacks were sighted. The afternoon is hard to put into words, but some of our behaviors help describe the magnitude of the whale watching experiences we had today. Despite the 15 knot wind, and on and off rain, many of us spent most of the afternoon out on the decks of the ship in continual amazement and snapping more photos than we thought we would take all week. We were thrilled to see the whales dive and show their flukes, but that was just the beginning. Sometimes a dive was followed by a breach. When they all dove together, we were privileged to be the observers of one of the rarest and most spectacular humpback whale behaviors known – bubblenet feeding. Ten unrelated individuals working together, with the use of bubbles and sound have figured out a way to herd fish into a tight group into which they all then lunged. Southeast Alaska is the only place in the world where this unique behavior we saw today takes place.
