Otter Bay

It was fairly late by the time we arrived in Otter Bay and we were hoping no-one had got there before us, since it was fairly small. Unfortunately it has a rock right in the middle, otherwise it would have been wonderful. But with next to no wind, it seemed safe enough, though Dean was not happy with it. Definitely not a favourite anchorage for him! The photo below shows the rock. It is near completely submerged at high tide.

It wasn’t a foggy morning when we awoke and the blue sky was out, however today there were some clouds. And there were icebergs floating past in the channel at the top of the bay. That is so weird! We had a kayak and ticked off most of the usual animals. Lots of seagulls. I did get a photo of a new bird we haven’t seen in Alaska before, a Black Oyster Catcher. I love the Australian Pied Oyster Catchers so it was nice to see their Alaskan cousin. We also spotted a few eagles, including one that was being chased by a flock of seagulls.

A fleeting glimpse of a black bear but unfortunately we were upwind and after a quick sniff of the air, fled into the bushes. Dean parked himself in the rocks to see if it came back out but we didn’t see it. Clearly not habituated, and that is what we like to see.

Not having grown up knowing how to handle bears, we are taking in everything we are told and read. My latest on bears from the National Park Service is if a brown bear makes contact play dead, lie down on the ground, and lace your fingers behind your head and do not move. However if a black bear makes contact fight back vigorously as this is likely a predatory attack! Apparently black bears are more likely to become predators than grizzly’s.

So we’ll move on to something much less threatening. The otters kept away from us as usual however a curious seal followed us around, always keeping its distance but remaining in sight. We speculated the otters must by resilient creatures. They were almost hunted out of existence for their amazing fur during the Russian era, then took another hit with the Valdez oil spill, but we see them all over the place. I am glad, they are so sweet. I previously mentioned that a group of otters floating is a raft. Do you know what a group of otters diving and playing are called? A romp!!

As we kayaked near the river mouth there were schools of salmon swimming about and jumping all over the place. But clearly much of the run was over, because we could see hundreds of dead ones lying on the sea floor. It is an astonishing life cycle and thankfully there was no smell associated with it.

We kayaked out to the kelp beds at the head of the bay and I got this nice photo of Dean with the snow clad mountains of Knight Island behind him.

We paddled hard across the wind to reach the islets on the other side of the bay, then just drifted back to the boat with the tide and the wind pushing us in.

As we drifted we got separated and our poor guardian seal didn’t know who he wanted to follow. So in the end he got between us to keep an eye on both of us. Hopefully you can just see his blurry little head between me and Dean at the boat. They’re funny things, they pop up with only their eyes and the top of their head above the water. And if you give them too much attention they will sink down without as much as a splash, in complete silence. And they simply aren’t there anymore. But then they will reappear behind you. Some of them breath heavily and it is a bit disconcerting to just hear this continuous heavy breathing behind you as you are peacefully paddling along.

We left the kayaks inflated as there won’t be much wind and hopefully we’ll go for an explore back in Jackpot Bay. We really felt we did hit the Jackpot finding that bay, and it is so enormous we haven’t given it justice, so are going back for another look, maybe in a different anchorage.

Most of the icebergs had been sucked back in the bay with the incoming tide, but we still needed to keep a vigilent lookout for any that were still lurking. We are particularly concerned about ones that are nearly melted on top but still quite large sitting mainly under the water.

A passing pleasure boat was out whale spotting and contacted us to see if we’d seen any so we let them know our sightings from the previous day and the direction they had been swimming.

We did a steady 4-5knots under Genoa across the bay. Dean stuck his head out of the cockpit and said, gee the weather is deceptive. Meaning it looks so lovely and blue and warm but it is actually freezing. I said yes, if you ignore the snow on the mountains and the icebergs floating past you might just be deceived!

The far off mountains of Montague island had thick clouds behind them, rolling over, looking a bit threatening. My poor camera lens now sticky taped together after I dropped it is struggling so I hope you can see what I am talking about ok! I am hoping the camera experts can do surgery on it for me when I get home.

We were approaching the mouth of Jackpot Bay when we saw a remarkable thing. There was a flurry of water, waves, things jumping, snorts from whales and we couldn’t tell what was happening. We put the engine into neutral to watch and it appeared two maybe three whales were moving in the opposite direction to us and at least three small dolphins were going crazy all around them. We then thought the dolphins were coming over to us, but they darted away again. We think maybe they were hunting and feeding and the whales were just in the way. But the whales seemed pretty unhappy that these flippity gibbets were in their personal space and did some big noisy snorts, and then continued on their way and the dolphins headed in a different direction, and we went in ours, all over in a minute.

Here’s a “there she blows” moment by one not very happy whale. Take note of those red fishing buoys in the background, and I will talk about them in my next post.

And here you can see the whale with three dolphins charging by being their little histrionic selves.