Sitkoh Bay and Chatham Strait
It seems as if at last spring has come upon us. The morning promised us good weather, as we could already see holes in the clouds! Slowly we wended our way into Sitkoh Bay from Chatham Strait, on the east coast of the large island of Chichagof. This is one of the three islands in Southeast Alaska (the others are the A and B islands, Admiralty and Baranof) that has only brown bears. The other name for these big bears is grizzly. As we slowly passes a series of old houses, some relicts of the salmon cannery days, we scanned the shoreline for these lovely bears. And we were soon rewarded with a couple of them, on the beach, feeding upon the rich and fresh rye grass. For some unknown reason they suddenly ran off and hid in the immediate forest of Sitka spruce and hemlock, to reappear a few seconds later and head for the green grass. Again they showed this behavior, and seconds later only one of the animals came out again, and kept on feeding. We had the opportunity of approaching it quite a bit, and cameras clicked wildly. Eventually we sailed further ahead, into Sitkoh Bay, and prepared for the after breakfast activities: hiking, kayaking and touring in a Zodiac. Hikers were rewarded with quite a few interesting plants along a logging road, now active again. The kayakers had the opportunity of seeing, at a close range, a good series of birds, foremost of which were the eagles. And the Zodiac tours saw quite a few invertebrates at the seashore, as the tide was down, as well as harbor seals and Steller sea lions.
We then set sail for Chatham Strait again, and headed north in search of the great ocean behemoths. These we soon found, a humpback whale, which we watched for a while, sailed on, heard an interesting lecture on the Russian history of Alaska, and saw Dall’s porpoises making tall rooster-tails with their dorsal fins, coming unto the bow of our ship, and having some fun, bow riding our bow-wave.
At the time recap was to start, great news was heard from the bridge: a group of humpback whales out in front of us. So we slowed down, and had one of the most interesting sights imaginable: bubble-net feeding whales!
And large numbers of bald eagles, and bald eagle nests. Some of us saw harbor seals in the water and on land, as well as a few Steller sea lions. Then, during our second round of Zodiac tours, we saw a humpback whale eating, very near our boat. It did a few blow series, and then took off, slowly entering Chatham Strait.