Unalaska—birds and whales

 Sunday August 23rd

Overnight into Sunday we traveled south, reaching the uninhabited Baby Islands by mid morning. We sailed past thousands of sea birds in the air and on the water, and at the Baby Islands found ourselves near a rookery for Tufted Puffins. It was hard to even look for other birds because the puffins were so numerous and distracting. We also got our first look at Steller Sea Lions, the largest species in North America.  The fog raised and lowered throughout the morning, adding to the viewing and photography challenges. 

Sunday afternoon the group split up to do several activities around Dutch Harbor, some related to local history and some to nature. We chose a nature walk and saw more sea lions, sea otters and both songbirds and seabirds. The weather was sunny and warm, a real change from the morning. 

Dutch Harbor is the port for the city of Unalaska, population 4200. It is one of the largest fishing ports in the US and central to the King and Snow Crab industries. The nearest town of any size (Kodiak) is 600 miles to the east. As isolated as that sounds, we are at the eastern end of the Aleutians and have many hundreds of miles yet to go. 

Unalaska Island has been inhabited by the Aleut people for thousands of years, and was an important Russian fur trade site. There was a US military base in Dutch Harbor created after the 1942 attack. 

Many of the birds we have been seeking (and seeing) are members of the auk family.  These are birds like puffins who swim underwater with their wings rather than their feet and can fly (sometimes a bit awkwardly). They tend to be black on the back and white on the tummy, which is camouflage both with respect to avian predators and the prey that the auks pursue underwater. All are colonial nesters, meaning that whether they nest in burrows or on ledges, they return to nesting sites with hundreds of their friends and relations. The largest current auk is the thick-billed murre (18” body length) and the smallest is the least auklet (6”). We have seen both, as well as many other species in the same family.

At dinner, as we headed away from Dutch Harbor into deeper water along the north shore of Unalaska Island, we thought we saw the “blow” from a pod of whales off to the side of the ship. The captain pivoted the ship to increase our chances of seeing them. As we ran up to the bow, we encountered an amazing sight. Directly in front of the bow, the sea was black with seabirds, literally thousands of shearwaters (medium sized sea birds), as well as gulls and fulmars and puffins and murres. There were also about 20 humpback whales which moved back and forth sucking in herring and then closing their baleen-filled mouths to strain the water back out. We stood mesmerized. As the ship got closer to the action, we heard the sound of rain on the water—- but it was the herring, surfacing in pursuit of their own prey (phytoplankton ) that tends to rise to the surface around dusk. Amazing.

Finally, just at sunset (and moonrise), about 10 pm, a pod of killer whales chose to feed near the ship. Credit to our captain and her pilots for getting us into position for both of these encounters. 

Pictured: Kittlitz’s murrelet, American pipit, Arctic ground squirrel, bald eagle, feeding frenzy, humpback feeding amongst the birds, male killer whale