Alaskan Adventures of Mareth Griffith.
Page 4
Date: Thur, 21 June 2007
| Hello to Friends, Family, Smith People,
Theater People, Bird People and Wine Shop People, Summer finally seems to be here to stay, coming after nearly three weeks of pretty rainy weather. This rainy streak culminated with snow showers up on the mountain, but thankfully the winter season seems to have given up for now. Which is good, as I don't think I can stand for a winter that continues into June. But the rain was great as far as the Alaska SeaLife Center is concerned, as lousy weather means more visitors for us - especially when there are cruise ships in port. When the weather hasn't been horrible, I've been spending a few days a week working for a local boat touring company as a deckhand. The job sounds rather fancier than it actually is - there's a lot of cleaning and food prep involved, but there's also the chance to see a lot of whales. And we have been seeing quite a good number. Humpback whales are pretty common here, but they're not always very showy. A few appearances at the surface, maybe a quick look at his tail, and he's back down for a feed. We did get a nice look at a juvenile humpback with its mother - Junior kept sticking his head out of the water and waving his flippers at us as he rolled around in the water. Grey whales also frequent this area of Alaska, although this time of year most of them are much further north, on their feeding grounds. With grey whales, you're lucky if you see anything that can be identified as a whale in the first place. They spent more time underwater than do any other sort of whale we see. Mostly with greys, you just see the plume of water as they exhale - the 'blow'. Grey whales have what has been described as a heart-shaped blow - but what chinches the identification for me is: it's a grey whale if there is a blow with no whale attached. We've also been seeing a very skittish 'mystery whale', tentatively ID'd as a bottlenose whale. Of course, a blow with no whale attached can also be caused by a reef in the water getting hit by a wave, which is a misidentification often made by our visitors. These 'reef whales' are close relatives to other common misidentification animals, including rock sharks, snow patch mountain goats, log seals, and kelp otters. The boats sometimes spot Dalls porpoises, which can be a lot of fun if the porpoises are in the mood. These porpoises are like little mini-orcas - imagine Flipper painted to look like Free Willy. Sometimes, you spot the little guys and they immediately just take off and you don't see them again. But, if the Dalls are bored, sometimes they chase the boat. This is fun. Dalls can actually outrun motorboats over short distances. If they're in the mood, they run right along the wake of the boat, surfacing and crossing back underneath. On good days we might get a dozen or so cruising alongside. Dalls have short attention spans (maybe they're just in a hurry to get back to chasing fish) and they'll only play along for maybe a minute. The Dalls are great to watch, but watching the tourists is also pretty entertaining. Dalls surface and dive again incredibly quickly - they move so fast they create a trough in the water behind their heads, so they don't even need to completely surface to breathe. This makes them very tricky to photograph - especially with the kind of digital camera that has a delay between hitting the button and taking a picture. But watching the tourists try and get their perfect photograph can be pretty entertaining. I'm also amazed at the number of tourists that are up in Alaska, taking a whale-watching cruise, and are documenting the whole trip with disposable cameras. But, if you go on a whale-watching trip, the whales you really want to see are the Orcas, or killer whales. They're kind of the ultimate for a charismatic, instantly recognizable animal. They're pretty big, they've got the 'Jaws' fin right there on their back, and they're also the one species up here that tourists are likely to know from nature movies and PBS specials. But nothing beats seeing orcas in the wild. The most common orcas we get up here (fish-eating) travel in groups and are also pretty sociable. And the orcas, like the Dalls, are often as interested in seeing us as we are in seeing them. With orcas, they best approach to take is to head near their general vicinity and then just turn off the engines. Usually, some or all of the orcas will change course to swing by the boat, often coming within a few feet of the sides. They also stay nearer the surface for longer, and surface at quick, regular intervals. This makes it a lot easier for the disposable-camera-touting tourists to document their encounter, and close-up visits by orcas always send the entire boat into paroxysms of photography. We also swing by steller sea lion rookeries - including the one at Chiswell Island that the SeaLife Center has their cameras stationed on. Some of the boat captains have pretty strong opinions about the cameras being there, (but I've never heard anything negative from actual visitors). The captain's argument seems to be that the cameras being there makes it obvious that we 'know' the sea lions are going to be there - it isn't something extra special we found just for today's group of tourists. Yes, you want to make every tour special for the visitors... but there are better ways of accomplishing this than misinforming visitors about the breeding habits of sea lions. This became really obvious to me during one tour I was on in March, during some really heavy snow. We couldn't see very far off into the water, and the water itself was so choppy that we had almost no chance of finding whales. So, the captain went really slowly all the way down the coast of the bay, looking at every tidal-access dock and abandoned military fort and summer-house we could find. The wildlife narration went something like this: "Look at that! We are in luck today, folks - we have a *bald eagle*perched right in front of the boat! Aren't we lucky today - you cannot get more Alaskan than this!" Later. "And look at this! *Another* bald eagle! Get your cameras ready, ladies and gentlemen, this is the perfect Alaskan photograph - a bald eagle in the snow, perched against this amazing backdrop of glacier-covered mountains!" Later. "Look over to the right! *Two* bald eagles! Just think, folks, some Americans will go their whole lives without ever seeing our national bird in its natural habitat, and boy are we seeing plenty of them today!" You get the idea. We spent time with every bald eagle we could find, and saw the sea lions. And the tourists left the boat with no idea that they'd just experienced one of the most pathetic whale-watching trips I'd ever seen. I guess its all in how you sell what you have. Mareth PS - we are still waiting for Chloe the seal to have her pup. Apparently a May 23 due date was a little optimistic. but its gotta happen soon - I'm not sure its possible for the poor seal to look any fatter. The mammal and vet staff have been pulling 24-hour watches on her, and they are beginning to look pretty done in as well. Just get on with it Chloe! But, the steller sea lion breeding colony we are monitoring from the center has had over 50 pups born just in the past few weeks. Also a few firsts for science. Our researchers saw a steller sea lion give birth to twins (never documented before), and one sea lion mother adopting another sea lion's pup (also new). Plus lots of bird eggs from our breeding flocks of ducks. |