We awoke to another beautiful day in Southeast Alaska with calm winds and partly cloudy skies. There were a few sleepy sailors at breakfast this morning, as many stayed up late to watch and photograph the amazing Aurora Borealis display last night as we left Glacier Bay behind. What an awesome place to see the Northern Lights, with so little ambient light, other than the rising moon, and clear skies above us. A post-breakfast workshop on the iPhone camera, led by photo instructor Jonathon Kingston, helped kick start the day and get our creative juices flowing.
Our first adventure took us ashore to Pavlof Harbor, a former cannery site from the late 1880s to the early 1900s, due to the large and reliable runs of salmon, which fortunately for us, are still running today. It’s also a perfect place for bear viewing, as the creek that comes out of the lake above the harbor, cascades over a 10-foot waterfall that spans the creek, which at low tide is shallow enough for the bears to easily feast on pink and chum salmon. We arrived at the perfect tide for viewing, but there were no bears to be seen. However, our patience paid off, for within 45 minutes, a large brown bear showed up and modeled perfect salmon catching technique and dined on a few unlucky pinks.
The plan for the remainder of the day was to cruise Chatham Strait looking for whales, but it was more bears we found instead, snacking on salmon in another tidal creek. As we pulled away from the bears, we didn’t get very far before encountering a pod of resident/fish-eating killer whales, which we followed back toward the bears, and beyond, for a grand finale to our expedition. After an hour-long show of their beauty and grace, and thousands of shutter clicks, we turned back south and made our way towards the end of our journey, west through Peril Strait and onto Sitka.
