After a few wet days traveling north, we finally received a break in the clouds at the most opportune time. Sprinkled within the narrow confines of Cross Sound, the Inian Islands are some of the most productive and exciting rocks and islets in Southeast Alaska. Slammed by tidal currents like an ever-flowing stream of food and oxygen, it’s a hotbed of activity centered around large charismatic megafauna, primarily marine mammals. Guests loaded into boats and went for exploratory cruises with pinnipeds and cetaceans.
Instead of staying dry to watch the action from the comfort of a boat, bartender Garland and I made the most of a slack tide and went for a dive to explore one of the myriad small underwater ridges and kelp forests of the Inian Islands. After punching through the bull kelp and curtain kelp, we encountered dozens of moon jellies pulsing through the blue-green water like drifting galaxies on our ocean planet. We kicked further and traveled deeper until we were finally free of kelp and onto the rocky reef.
Just as we were filming an elaborate, large, orange finger sponge, a huge dark shape passed overhead, close enough to touch. Moving with fluid fin strokes and effortlessly twisting in the current, a bull northern sea lion had decided to pay us a little visit. He was not alone. All thoughts of filming nudibranchs and greenlings quickly went out the window with each pass and inquisitive eye. With our tanks getting lower by the minute we begrudgingly returned to the surface and our natural, gaseous environment.
And then we had ridiculously good humpback whales in the golden sunset until it was too dark to see. Which, in Southeast Alaska, is really late.
