Day 72 - Seward

They Have True Fiords In Six Countries--We Now Have Only Three To Go

Time for a voyage. After a quick coffee, Ellen, Sally and I walked along the waterfront to the hotel and dock where the Viewfinder was docked. It is a 58 foot boat taking 36 passengers on. tour down Resurrection Bay and out into the Gulf of Alaska to Harris Bay and then into the Northwestern Fiord, an eight and a half hour trip of over 100 miles.

We chose this one because it was a relatively small boat and the crew were willing to cater to birders, even though it is primarily a wildlife and glacier tour. We were not disappointed. We boarded and asked Captain Justin about birding and he directed us to his Mate, Eric, who was a birder, hailing from New Jersey. They would make an effort to find the birds we were interested in.

Ellen had her list ready. Being our first time on the coast, she had marked up a local checklist with the ones she hadn't seen. Their were about a dozen birds on the list, of which eight or nine would be likely in the waters off Seward and Kenai Fiords National Park.

The trip would take us along the edge of the national park and up to the toe of the Northwestern Glacier, the only glacier in the park that still terminates at the water's edge and it was a great day to take the trip. The forecast had been for a cloudy day with a chance of showers, but it was sunny when we left and remained so for about half the trip, finally clouding over in the afternoon. There was no rain.

We were barely away from the dock when the first species on the list appeared, Pigeon Guillemots under the pilings of the Seward Coal Dock. It was a great trip out, bird-wise. There were lots of puffins, both Tufted Puffins and Horned Puffins, Common Murres as well. Those were new birds, but there were also almost uncountable Black-legged Kittiwakes, Glaucous-winged Gulls and Marbled Murrelets, new birds that we had first spotted yesterday. As we headed up to Harris Bay, we spotted Parakeet Auklets and then Rhinoceros Auklets.

Along the way we also passed several groups of Steller's Sea Lions and found several Humpback Whales. These northwestern whales seem smaller than the Humpbacks seem in Massachusetts Bay in the summer. We also saw the resident Orca. There is only a solo male Orca who spends much of his time in the gulf and bays along Kenai National Park. He is the sole surviving member of a resident family group who badly affected by the Valdez oil spill. Since resident groups don't mix, he has remained alone in his territory since then.

After the Orca, we made our way up to the glacier, where we were glad to have brought along several layers of warm clothes and winter hats and gloves. It is cold when you are on the water surrounded by very big ice chunks. The glacier was quite impressive and surprising. It was very noisy. Loud cracks and booms would emanate from the glacier as the ice moved. Sometimes it would be accompanied by blocks of ice falling into the water, but often there would be the noise and we could see nothing happening.

The Northwestern Fiord is a relatively recent body of water. It didn't exist in 1910, but the glacier has receded eight miles since then, with the waters from the Gulf of Alaska breaching the terminal moraine forming the fiord. According to Justin, fiords only exist on six places, Norway, Alaska, New Zealand, Iceland, Greenland and Chile. We have actually traveled on fiords in the first three places...only three to go.

Not far from the face of the glacier was a line of ice floes, which we kept well away from, but were littered with seals. There must have been hundreds lying about on the ice.

After just drifting and watching for quite a while, the engines restarted and we were on our way back. There were still two birds on Ellen's list of alcids to be found, the Ancient Murrelet and the Kittlitz's Murrelet. The Kittlitz's is the rarest, only found in glacial waters, but Eric came through and we spotted one on the way out of the fiord. As a bonus, just as he spotted the murrelet, a pair of Black Oystercatchers, also life birds for Ellen.

On the way out we stopped again to whale watch, for a bit too long for our taste as it meant that the boat had to hurry back and, although the crew tried, we didn't find that last bird, the Ancient Murrelet.