This morning, we awoke to dramatic, layered clouds draped on the forested mountains of Peril Strait. As we approached the Chatham Strait, the sun started to peek through – casting rays and spots of brilliant light on the waters around us. We had two different humpback whale sightings during the morning, which perfectly coincided with the breaks before and after the briefings by our naturalists and Third Mate which focused on expedition landing craft and kayak operations, bear safety and hiking. The humpbacks that joined us just before lunch slowly got closer and closer to the ship to where we were able to clearly view the blowholes just off the bow.
During lunch, as the ship positioned to Pavlof Harbor, a call from the bridge came over the radios that there was a brown bear sow with cubs on our landing beach. Our expedition leader, Rab Cummings, quickly changed gears and set the plans in motion to load everyone into the expedition landing crafts to do a cruise along the beach so that everyone could get a good look at the beautiful female and her THREE yearling cubs. We quietly sat off the coast and watched the bears eat sedge grass, seemingly unaffected by our presence while being viewed by a swimming harbor seal, which would poke its head out of the water around the expedition landing crafts.
After watching the bears, we resumed our afternoon plans of walks and kayak rounds on a different beach. Some of the longer walkers penetrated deeply into the forest past the layer of Sitka alders and into the typically dense Southeast Alaskan canopy of Western Hemlocks and Sitka Spruce trees. We continued deeper into the bog to encounter step moss, shooting stars, bog laurels, false lily-of-the-valley and lots of tannic water and sucking mud. It was great fun to work through the bog without losing a boot to the mire.
During the second round, I joined the kayakers and was rewarded with even more views of the brown bear sow and her cubs on the beach! All-in-all, it was a superlative first day in Southeast Alaska – humpback whales, eagles, harbor seals and a close-up (but safe) encounter with a large, healthy brown bear with her good-sized triplet cubs.
