Chatham Strait, Funter Bay
While walking onto the bow of the National Geographic Sea Lion this morning I took a moment to orientate myself to our location, we were at the east end of Peril Strait, and heading north along Chichagof Island. This morning was to be dedicated to looking for wildlife, both on the shore and in the water. There were a few of the usual subjects around, Marbled murrlets, Gluacous-winged gulls and Dall’s porpoise, but in general pretty quiet for the nice morning that we had today. There were signs that the day may even get better, some blue sky, with high clouds.
After breakfast there was a Brown bear spotted foraging on one of the beaches along Chichagof, so we turned in to get a better look at the bruin. It seemed to be a younger bear with long legs, and not really filled out as far as body size. It did some feeding along the upper tidal line, and then moved up the beach to graze on grasses for a few minutes before returning to its original position. We were questioning “what might that bear be so focused on in that tidal area”, could it be something dead, an aquatic invertebrate of some kind, maybe clams? Guess we’ll never know!
We let the bear go on foraging in peace, and moved onward to look for other creatures. We barely got started when we saw a few individual Humpback whales feeding near shore, but we were looking for larger groups, so we continued north. After checking the usual haunts in that area, we pushed on further, finding another Brown bear, and a lone Humpback whale foraging near shore, but still not the larger group that we were hoping for this morning.
Some more searching, and a change of plans, led us further north and across Chatham Strait, over toward Admiralty Island, and our landing site for the afternoon, Funter Bay. By now the weather was definitely improving, and we were in for a sunny afternoon, our fourth in a row, amazing!
Right after lunch the activities started, walks through the forest, and our first kayaking of the voyage. There was much to hear about the history of this area, as well as the natural history in the “Fortress of the Bears”. Admiralty Island has the highest population density of Brown bears anyplace in the world. New studies show it may be up to three bears per square mile, and we saw plenty signs of bears. After two rounds of both kayaking and walking, it was time to head back to the ship for a well deserved cocktail hour, evening recap and another delicious dinner. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll find those groups of whales that we looked so hard for today. We’ll do our best, I have a really good feeling that our luck with whales will turn!
