Moominmama's Adventures: Kenai Fjords National Park

In which Moominmama sees Humpback whales team up and searches out more glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park...

About half of the Kenai Fjords National Park is covered with glaciers extending from the Harding Icefield. The rest is made up of the cliffs, islands and icy waters of Resurrection Bay.

Boat travel was the best way to see what the park had to offer -- and it had a lot! Moominmama saw sea otters, puffins, seals, sea lions and orcas. But perhaps the most spectacular sighting was a group of humpback whales on the Gulf of Alaska.

They were circling under water and releasing a steady stream of bubbles that fool schools of fish into thinking they are walled in. Then the whales, in unison, swoop under and up, mouths wide open to scoop up the fish. 

According to our captain, researchers have recorded whale communications under water and observed how each maintains a position in the circle, even as they swoop upwards. 

It is a coordinated action and relatively new to the Gulf of Alaska humpbacks who apparently learned it about 10 years ago from fellow humpbacks near Juneau. The behavior, known as bubble netting, was particularly surprising because humpbacks are generally solitary hunters and not known to work as a pack until now.

The wide whale jaws, as they breach, are the color of mussel shells, a variegated black that is speckled and streaked with purple, white and silver. They are huge, and the animals rise up cheek to jowl. You can easily imagine how Jonah fell into the belly of a whale!

Moominmama very much regrets not getting a photo to share. Fortunately, the tufted puffin (left) and the horned puffin behind it stood still for me (and it helped this was at the SeaLife Center, not out in the wild!) What I couldn't capture is what marvelous swimmers these birds are as they dive under water in search of food.

The boat tour of the fjords brought us to the cliffs and rocky islands where they nest, and the plump little birds are fun to watch with their big orange beaks. The islands in the fjord serve as rookeries for many types of birds as well as sea mammals. The freshwater streams that run into the bay also provide the spawning grounds for the salmon.

I saw but captured none of this! Instead most of my photographs feature blurry blobs where the animals are supposed to be! But I share this picture at left because it was one of my first tidewater glaciers (Aialik), and one that is calving rapidly into the bay, providing floating ice where seals can sun themselves away from any preying orcas.

The brown blobs on the ice here are harbor seals. Take my word for it!

Not content to see the national park from only the water, Moominmama also signed up for another glacier hike, this time to Exit Glacier. Rather than attempt ice climbing or rappelling, I did a gentler hike, but Exit remains a steep pile of ice and still requires crampons to get around. 

Moominmama is struck by how each glacier is different even if the forces at work are the same. Exit Glacier has a lot of "firn" on top, the not-yet-compressed ice mixed with air, which creates a more pocked and jagged surface. 

We were required to wear gloves at all times because that ice could easily abrade the skin.

None of this has dimmed my fascination with glaciers, and it doesn't hurt that there are often spectacular views to see from the ice. Glaciers, when large enough, can create their own weather, in this case, reflecting back enough light to clear the clouds overhead even though they hung over the nearby town of Seward.

The boat trip and the glacier hike were about the only times I saw sun in the Seward area. My lithium battery is suffering for lack of solar, but tomorrow I head north, first for a stop in Talkeetna and then for a week in Denali. 

I leave you with a view looking down from Exit Glacier. Now I wait to find out if I'll be one of the lucky ones to get a shot of the peak of Denali. It too creates its own weather, and that's not usually sun!