Inian Pass, Point Adolphus
Light. Photography is writing with light. This morning National Geographic Sea Bird slowed to watch humpback whales in the low angular side-light that is known as the golden hour. Fluke up dives glistened in the sunshine. Blows were tall and columnar in the fresh morning air. It was as if the whales too were surfacing in synchronicity as breakfast was being served.
We launched our fleet of Zodiacs in the Inian Islands where water rushing in from the Gulf of Alaska brought predator and prey together. Stellar sea lions aggregated in the rip tides, catching and eating halibut, salmon, and other fish. Sea otters wrapped in kelp snacked on sea urchins. Eagles, too, fished the edges created by the strong conflicting currents. Kittiwakes, puffins, murrelets, cormorants, Bonaparte’s gulls and a great blue heron worked the upwelling waters. All this is in a day’s work for wildlife that depends upon extended light unique to summertime and the influx of nutrients where the Inside Passage opens to the Pacific.
The overhead sunlight though that illuminated the Fairweather Range some eighty clear cloudless miles away gave a rare backdrop to this spectacular scene. Photographers worked the sunlight, sometimes shooting into it, other times using its warmth to bring out the details, and consciously layering images with the snowcapped mountains sparkling in the sunshine.
The forest trail at Fox Creek gave us an opportunity to hike in the diffused light of the forest and bog. Water droplets on ferns, perennial bear tracks, salmon swimming upstream and wild celery are more challenging to photograph in the filtered and streaming contrasting uneven light that the canopy creates.
Some of us strolled, others explored by kayak, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun.
Humpback whales in the second golden light of the day fed sub-surface next to the ship. Blows hung in the air, back lit by the sun low in the western sky. Whales trumpeted, rostrums and dorsal fins accompanied our shutters, and flukes in every direction pulled our eyes.
Undersea Specialist, Justin Hoffman, gave us the last gift of light today. Justin and Chris, dry suits donned, slipped in the inky green water of dusk with dive lights and video camera sharing with us a “live dive.” We closed the day with a grand underwater adventure. Navigating significant current, cod, sea anemone, galloping sea star, cucumber and shrimp were drawn into the light. On this dive we never even got wet.
The light of a full moon shimmered on the glassy waters just outside tomorrow’s destination, Glacier Bay National Park. And by that light, just after midnight, we navigated deep into the park so that perhaps the first sunlight of a new day would shine on a landscape carved by ice.
