We looked out our window this morning to see sea otters swimming past. We also saw Sitka Black-tailed deer on the shoreline. Alaskan weather caught up with us— it was mister drizzly or raining all day. After breakfast we kayaked in a quiet bay at the edge of Chatham Strait, where a male otter floated at his ease, unaffected by the humans in their bright orange kayaks.
We also hiked through the neighboring forest, learning about its ecosystem. The forest is carpeted in sphagnum moss and consists of a mix of Sitka spruce and hemlock trees. The entire forest is connected via the mycelium network —- while mushrooms are the visible portion of this network, the rest of it (hundreds of miles of connections) entwines the roots of the forest and enables nutrients to be passed from tree to tree. In fact, deep in these forests, scientists have found traces of compounds that should only exist in the deep ocean, a consequence of the network distributing nutrients from salmon carcasses on the shoreline. On our hike we also saw banana slugs (including an albino), important members of the decomposition team of the forest.
The afternoon was spent heading north through the Chatham Strait towards Glacier Bay. We stopped to see a lovely waterfall, and saw another humpback very close to the shore. As we left, it raised its pectoral fin to wave goodbye. We encountered another group of bubble-net feeding humpbacks and some more buoy-resting sea lions.
One of the elements of Lindblad trips is that the naturalist staff includes a diving team. In the evening we watch videos taken below the surface while we were exploring above. Yesterday’s presentation showed anemones, urchins and other species of deep water that live on the underside of the floating docks at Petersburg. Petersburg has 15-25 feet of tidal swing in a day, so the docks float (riding up and down on their pylons) so the bottom of the dock is always submerged… enabling deep water creatures to live there successfully.
Pictured: sea otter, waterfall, humpback waving goodbye, albino banana slug
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