In the early morning the cloud lifted and we were pleased to see patches of blue sky and bright sunshine. During breakfast we were amazed to see another vessel heading past us on its way up Chatham Strait. This was a pure white hulled privately owned cruiser called ‘A’ that looks somewhat like a submarine. The cruiser is 112 m long and when moving at 25 knots leaves no bow wave due to its revolutionary ‘Starck’ designed hull. It’s owned by a Russian billionaire and reputedly cost over $300 million to build. It was built in Germany and launched in 2004. The Russian oligarch and his wife both have given names commencing with ‘A’, hence the name of this super luxury boat.
By 9.00 a.m. the weather had warmed up even further and when it came time to start our kayaking the air temperature must have been around 18oC. We’ve been warned to expect the likelihood of rain in Alaska any day, any time irrespective of the present conditions so we covered up with waterproof pants and parkas and then sweltered in the mid-morning warmth.
Our first activity was to kayak around from Hanus Bay into a lagoon. This area of Baranof Island is subject to big tidal shifts so we were lucky to enter the lagoon with still a reasonable depth of water. The lagoon was about 500 m across and in single kayaks we weaved in amongst reefs and submerged logs to a river that flows into the lagoon. We travelled up the narrow river, working against a fairly strong current until we reached a small rocky cascade where the sea-water ended and the fresh water started. We were hoping to find salmon leaping up the small waterfall but none was seen although there were fish splashing around in the small lake (Lake Eva) at the top of the cascade. No bears were present and that was a good indication that the salmon run was not occurring at present.
Whilst kayaking we had a harbour seal frolicking around quite close to us and a bald eagle swooped a couple of times to catch a fish.
After kayaking we joined a nature walk through the dense rain forest that’s adjacent to the lagoon and stream. The scenery was impressive with the giant spruce, yellow cedar and hemlock trees filtering sunlight onto the mossy forest floor. We travelled 3 km up to Lake Eva where we turned around. Along the way we found specimens of a ‘coral-root’ terrestrial orchid which had gone to seed and now had pink capsules but no actual flowers were found.
The afternoon period was spent in the close company of nine humpback whales. For over four hours we watched them go through a repeated feeding strategy called bubble curtain fishing.
The nine whales descend and at a depth of around 20 m surround a school of herring and start to release air forming a wall of bubbles that the fish won’t swim through. The leading whale then releases a shrill call and the whales in perfectly co-ordinated style surface together with their mouths wide open and take in a huge volume of water containing the herring.
We watched this procedure from a relatively close position for the afternoon during which time the whales did thirty or more surfacings.
On some occasions a whale would show delight in the success of their hunt by leaping from the water and breaching before slapping back on the water’s surface with a thunderous noise.
During the whole four hour encounter with the humpback whales, they stayed within the same region of Chatham Strait and ventured no further than a kilometre.
Humpback whale tail #3, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
Humpback whales #11, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
Humpback whales flipper #1, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
Humpback whales #8, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
Humpback whales #7, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
This was a most memorable afternoon’s entertainment.
Humpback whales
Chicken fungus, Lake Eva, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
Berry, Lake Eva, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
Forest, Lake Eva, Chatham Strait, Alaska, 19 Aug 2014
Waterfall, Lake Eva
Tony kayaking, Lake Eva