Wednesday, June 20
By now, we should be used to the idea that each day of this
adventure is better than the one before, but still… Today, we took a six-hour
cruise out of Seward and into Kenai Fjords National Park, almost all of which
is inaccessible by any other means of transport. And what a day it was! With a backdrop of dramatically changing
scenery, we saw an enormous variety of wildlife, including lots of seabirds,
including tufted puffins, several varieties of birds – penguin-like murres, eagles, gulls, and seabirds swimming underwater,
Steller sea lions and otters, porpoises cavorting and “playing” with the boat, and WHALES! Oh, my, did we see whales! Humpbacks blowing, breaching, and displaying the unique undersides of their tails, which enable naturalists to individually identify them.
We were
treated to the spectacle of groups of whales engaging in cooperative, or “bubble
net”, feeding – rare in these waters.
Several members of the pod circle an area of “feed” and the others rise
up, mouths open, to catch their prey. It
was a privilege to witness such a sight and it simply took our collective breath
away – on a par with, but a grander scale than, the struggle of the salmon as
they made their way up the Russian River days ago. We also saw quite a few of the rarely-sighted fin-back whales, the second largest species of mammals. The cruise also took us into iceberg-clogged
fjords for some glacier viewing before some more whale-watching,
sheep-spotting, on the way back to Seward after a long and rewarding day. What memories we made today!
Steller sea lions and otters, porpoises cavorting and “playing” with the boat, and WHALES! Oh, my, did we see whales! Humpbacks blowing, breaching, and displaying the unique undersides of their tails, which enable naturalists to individually identify them.
We were
treated to the spectacle of groups of whales engaging in cooperative, or “bubble
net”, feeding – rare in these waters.
Several members of the pod circle an area of “feed” and the others rise
up, mouths open, to catch their prey. It
was a privilege to witness such a sight and it simply took our collective breath
away – on a par with, but a grander scale than, the struggle of the salmon as
they made their way up the Russian River days ago. We also saw quite a few of the rarely-sighted fin-back whales, the second largest species of mammals. The cruise also took us into iceberg-clogged
fjords for some glacier viewing before some more whale-watching,
sheep-spotting, on the way back to Seward after a long and rewarding day. What memories we made today!
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