Although life in the rain is the norm in Southeast Alaska and enjoyable in its own sort of way, it is still nice to have a day without it … and this day was one of those days. In the early morning hours, the National Geographic Sea Bird came alongside the city dock at Petersburg, a picturesque town of Norwegian ancestry that is primarily a working fishing community. Our morning was filled with a variety of offerings beginning with a 6:15 a.m. until breakfast photo walk around town. The early light and water reflections, along with the quaint nature of the town gave our photographers ample beautiful and memorable targets for their shooting.
After breakfast, most of us went across the channel in Zodiacs to Kupreanof Island for a delightful walk to visit the muskeg on a boardwalk provided by the Forest Service. Muskeg is the Algonquin Indian name for bogs, a unique and amazing community of plants that can tolerate a water table at the surface and water that is acidic and thus skimpy on nutrients. One of the most interesting plants is the sundew that deals with the low nutrient levels in the muskeg by feeding on unlucky insects that are drawn to its sweet, sticky tentacles. Others of us spent our morning exploring the town or joined our naturalists for a walk on the docks learning about the various kinds of fishing vessels and local fisheries or the amazing invertebrates attached to the docks and pilings. Our ship-home left Petersburg at lunchtime and by mid afternoon we were on our way southward in the narrow, circuitous and beautiful Wrangle Narrows. Mid-way down the Narrows we were in Christmas Tree Alley, a place where the red and green navigation markers and buoys are so numerous and confounding that they look like randomly decorated Christmas lights.
And then “My Oh My” (as the Seattle Mariners baseball announcer says when a huge play happens)! As we passed through Snow Pass, a wonderfully productive and narrow channel, we spotted cooperative feeding humpback whales in the open bay just to the south and spent the remaining hours of the day watching two groups of magnificent whales in their beautifully choreographed feeding dance. At first there were three whales simultaneously coming to the surface nearby and then five others appeared in the distance. We put our hydrophone into the water and heard the otherworldly sounds that they make as they concentrate the fish into tight balls, blow a bubble net around them and then explode at the surface along with the herring, mouths open 90 degrees and fins and bodies emerging in every imaginable configuration. One time they even surfaced within their bubble net only a hundred feet of our fine ship, to the great joy and amazement of us all. Finally the sun set in a full palate of color as we watched the groups of cooperative feeders crashing to the orange-hued sea surface and also listened to the soft, sweet blows of whales in the stillness of the early evening. It just doesn’t get better than this day and a deep sense of connection and gratitude came over our little ship as we made our way to our own feeding frenzy on crab and ribs (mostly cooperative) and headed south to tomorrow’s adventures.
