Chatham Strait and Kelp Bay
It’s always a happy party that awakens to whale sightings, and as the Sea Bird sailed north along Chatham Strait in the early morning, spouting humpback whales could be seen in several directions. Before breakfast, everyone had been treated to numerous close views of mother-calf pairs, and single feeding adults. Unusually, several whales were seen to surface only once between ‘flukings’ when they dive. It is probable that food was quite deep given the good light – plankton migrate vertically and move deeper as light increases during the day to evade visual predators – and they may have been exploiting scattered shoals of herring. Later in the morning, some whales were seen bubble-net feeding, another indicator of fish predation. This extraordinary behavior can be utilized cooperatively or by solitary whales, and entails the release of a rapid stream of small bubbles through the baleen while a whale rises in a spiral path beneath a fish shoal. The bubbles rise to form a cylindrical curtain and corral the fish which evade the local water disturbance. As the fish concentrate close to the surface, the whale opens its vast gape – over 90 degrees – and engulfs the school while the throat pleats distend grotesquely. Water is then expelled between the keratinous baleen plates by the whale’s tongue and the fish are swallowed – this is truly predation on a massive scale.
In the afternoon we visited the beautiful shallow and secluded Kelp Bay on the west of Chatham Strait, for forest hikes and kayaking on a millpond sea. This was perhaps the finest old-growth forest visited thus far, with many huge western hemlocks and Sitka spruces, and the characteristic abundance of standing snags and fallen trees in various stages of decomposition. Step moss Hylocomium splendens dominated the ground vegetation in the deep shade, and shared its habitat with two peculiar purplish plants, coral-root orchid and northern groundcone, both of which lack chlorophyll and procure food parasitically from tree roots.
A short hike took us to a beaver pond, bordered with two species of water hemlocks, highly toxic relatives of carrots and parsnips. Youthful elves disappeared periodically into the venerable stumps, but gathered round a large banana slug as we learned about the intimate life details of one of the forests most spectacular, if maligned, animals.
Looking across different scales – from the wonders of slug mucus and moss fertilization, to the leviathan hemlocks, across the bay to the striking glaciated terrain beyond – this is truly a land for contemplation and wonderment. One cannot but be humbled and, at the same time, imbued with a sense of whole.
It’s always a happy party that awakens to whale sightings, and as the Sea Bird sailed north along Chatham Strait in the early morning, spouting humpback whales could be seen in several directions. Before breakfast, everyone had been treated to numerous close views of mother-calf pairs, and single feeding adults. Unusually, several whales were seen to surface only once between ‘flukings’ when they dive. It is probable that food was quite deep given the good light – plankton migrate vertically and move deeper as light increases during the day to evade visual predators – and they may have been exploiting scattered shoals of herring. Later in the morning, some whales were seen bubble-net feeding, another indicator of fish predation. This extraordinary behavior can be utilized cooperatively or by solitary whales, and entails the release of a rapid stream of small bubbles through the baleen while a whale rises in a spiral path beneath a fish shoal. The bubbles rise to form a cylindrical curtain and corral the fish which evade the local water disturbance. As the fish concentrate close to the surface, the whale opens its vast gape – over 90 degrees – and engulfs the school while the throat pleats distend grotesquely. Water is then expelled between the keratinous baleen plates by the whale’s tongue and the fish are swallowed – this is truly predation on a massive scale.
In the afternoon we visited the beautiful shallow and secluded Kelp Bay on the west of Chatham Strait, for forest hikes and kayaking on a millpond sea. This was perhaps the finest old-growth forest visited thus far, with many huge western hemlocks and Sitka spruces, and the characteristic abundance of standing snags and fallen trees in various stages of decomposition. Step moss Hylocomium splendens dominated the ground vegetation in the deep shade, and shared its habitat with two peculiar purplish plants, coral-root orchid and northern groundcone, both of which lack chlorophyll and procure food parasitically from tree roots.
A short hike took us to a beaver pond, bordered with two species of water hemlocks, highly toxic relatives of carrots and parsnips. Youthful elves disappeared periodically into the venerable stumps, but gathered round a large banana slug as we learned about the intimate life details of one of the forests most spectacular, if maligned, animals.
Looking across different scales – from the wonders of slug mucus and moss fertilization, to the leviathan hemlocks, across the bay to the striking glaciated terrain beyond – this is truly a land for contemplation and wonderment. One cannot but be humbled and, at the same time, imbued with a sense of whole.
