Glacier Bay
What’s in a name? In this morning’s bird lecture by naturalist Richard, we found out that what we think may be a “sea bird” may not be a proper sea bird and that auks similar to the ones we’ve seen here in Alaska were the original birds the Portuguese called penguins. During today’s events, that lesson to look beyond superficial names was emphasized—we learned that Glacier Bay’s glaciers have been disappearing, that the Grand Pacific glacier isn’t as grand as it was years ago, and that Gloomy Knob wasn’t gloomy at all today in the bright sunshine.
This morning we started out by picking up Glacier Bay National Park ranger Adrianna Cahill who stayed with us for 15 hours providing information on the biology, geology, glaciology, ecology and human history of the area. The M.V. Sea Bird became our time machine today since as we traveled up Glacier Bay, it was if we were traveling back in time about two centuries, when a massive glacier filled the bay for miles. We could see the ecological succession patterns proceed along the waterway. In some ways, the rocks exposed by the power of the glaciers allowed us to go back even further in time to about 400 million years ago when the layers were first deposited, before they later became deformed and uplifted.
The bare rocks are testament to the recent presence of the glaciers in the bay and they also provide a habitat for mountain goats and other organisms. We saw many mountain goats scrambling on the steep bare rock of Gloomy Knob—some looked like pairs of nannies and kids. Gulls mobbed an eagle while gulls, kittiwakes, murres, murrelets, terns, and puffins were seen offshore.
Where the glaciers had retreated earlier, dense forested areas existed. Although we couldn’t explore the temperate rainforests on foot, we remembered what the mosses, flowers, mushrooms, and trees looked like from our hikes on the previous days.
When we did get to the head of Glacier Bay, the Canadian border was in sight along with the terminal moraines of the Grand Pacific glacier and the tidewater Margerie Glacier calving ice. One particularly large block of ice was observed lodged in a crevasse and a few minutes later, fell into the sea. It was a nice reminder that ecological and geological events that happen over centuries, millennia, and eons are only accumulated through events which seem sudden and catastrophic to humans.
What’s in a name? In this morning’s bird lecture by naturalist Richard, we found out that what we think may be a “sea bird” may not be a proper sea bird and that auks similar to the ones we’ve seen here in Alaska were the original birds the Portuguese called penguins. During today’s events, that lesson to look beyond superficial names was emphasized—we learned that Glacier Bay’s glaciers have been disappearing, that the Grand Pacific glacier isn’t as grand as it was years ago, and that Gloomy Knob wasn’t gloomy at all today in the bright sunshine.
This morning we started out by picking up Glacier Bay National Park ranger Adrianna Cahill who stayed with us for 15 hours providing information on the biology, geology, glaciology, ecology and human history of the area. The M.V. Sea Bird became our time machine today since as we traveled up Glacier Bay, it was if we were traveling back in time about two centuries, when a massive glacier filled the bay for miles. We could see the ecological succession patterns proceed along the waterway. In some ways, the rocks exposed by the power of the glaciers allowed us to go back even further in time to about 400 million years ago when the layers were first deposited, before they later became deformed and uplifted.
The bare rocks are testament to the recent presence of the glaciers in the bay and they also provide a habitat for mountain goats and other organisms. We saw many mountain goats scrambling on the steep bare rock of Gloomy Knob—some looked like pairs of nannies and kids. Gulls mobbed an eagle while gulls, kittiwakes, murres, murrelets, terns, and puffins were seen offshore.
Where the glaciers had retreated earlier, dense forested areas existed. Although we couldn’t explore the temperate rainforests on foot, we remembered what the mosses, flowers, mushrooms, and trees looked like from our hikes on the previous days.
When we did get to the head of Glacier Bay, the Canadian border was in sight along with the terminal moraines of the Grand Pacific glacier and the tidewater Margerie Glacier calving ice. One particularly large block of ice was observed lodged in a crevasse and a few minutes later, fell into the sea. It was a nice reminder that ecological and geological events that happen over centuries, millennia, and eons are only accumulated through events which seem sudden and catastrophic to humans.
