Pavlof Harbor and Chatham Strait
For the first morning of our journey, we visited a magnificent place called Freshwater Bay, where Pavlof Harbor is located. This bay is located on one of the “ABC” islands, Chichagof Island. One of the wonders of this temperate rain forest is the ancestral feeling that comes back to us when we walk through the ancient bear trails. We see evidence of these mystical creatures; they inhabit these forests and their mere presence feels like the forest’s soul. Tracks, scratched trees with bear hair and trampled vegetation are all examples of the bear activity we discovered today during our walks.
When we first landed this morning on Chichagof Island, the tide was still low, and we could see several ochre stars on the intertidal zone. A few salmon jumped here and there, patiently waiting for the right time to swim upstream on their final exodus. All Pacific salmon will die after spawning. That is the reason why their spirits carry on in the living forests; they provide the marine nutrients to fertilize, from the simple mosses to the magnificent hemlocks and giant spruce.
We sailed out of the bay in search for marine mammals. On our way north, we slowed down to look at the salmon purse-seiners that were fishing. Today we learned different techniques and interesting facts about the salmon fisheries in Southeast Alaska.
Shortly after the whale presentation, we left the lounge to search from the National Geographic Sea Lion’s bow. It did not take long to find some distant blows, which showed some level of synchrony. A group of four humpback whales will surface and breathe, and after a few blows, they would dive one by one in an orderly fashion. We suspected something interesting was taking place under the surface, and as we talked about it, the four leviathans erupted together from their mysterious world breaking the water’s surface with open mouths. This behavior is known as bubble net feeding, or cooperative feeding.
As they repeated their act, time and time again, we deployed our hydrophone to listen to the sounds that the cyclopean bests emitted as they chased the schools of fish. A brief high pitch cacophony was captured by our hydrophone, and shortly after that, seven humpbacks violently emerged at unison a very short distance from our eyes in awe.
