Our big activity for this Thursday was a cruise of Resurrection Bay at 12:30, so we decided to fill our morning with a visit to the Alaska Sealife Center. It's a fun small aquarium focused on local animals, a great place to get a close look at some of the animals we were hoping to see later that afternoon from the boat. We especially loved the seals and sea lions here, as well as the large touch pools with anemones, sea urchin, and starfish.
Next, we headed over to the harbor for the cruise with Major Marine tours, a 4 hour wildlife viewing cruise. The boat had two levels, each glassed in and filled with tables. You could move around as much as you wanted in the open areas, but you were assigned a specific booth for your seat. The top level had open decks on all sides, but our bottom level had open space only at the front and back. We quickly realized that the back deck area both reeked of diesel and was incredibly loud from the motors, so the uncovered lower front deck became our preferred viewing spot. The deck railings were just low enough that Zadie could see over them without needing to be picked up.
Before we even left the harbor, the crew pointed out two bald eagles on posts at the harbor entrance (our buddies from yesterday?), and immediately after that, eagle-eye Ruth spotted a seal near the boat. Zadie is still upset that she didn't see the seal's cute little head poking out of the water.
After that immediate excitement, we didn't see a single animal for about an hour. The weather was so drizzly and foggy that we could barely see the shorelines, which didn't exactly encourage us to hang outside on the open decks. We sat for a while at our assigned table in the middle of the main cabin, drank our complimentary coffee and tea to warm up, and listened to the captain's occasional patter about the area.
Finally, the captain told us that orcas - a.k.a. killer whales - had just been spotted in the area, and that she'd head there in hopes that we could see them too. (All the boat captains help each other by sharing location info; we eventually saw several boats huddled around this orca spot.) We ditched our table and headed out in the rain to the front deck of the boat for a better view of the three orcas. The mom and baby stayed together, with the dad swimming further away. He was easy to identify by his huge dorsal fin. These whales were BIG. We got great views of them from various angles for close to an hour. So cool to see these animals in the wild. My wet iPhone pics don't do it justice.
By the end of that hour, Ruth was a little nauseous and had gone back inside to our table. The cruise stayed in the bay rather than the open ocean where the waves are rougher, but the wakes of the other boats made it very choppy. I was glad when we left the orcas as I was starting to feel nauseous too. I got some ginger candy from the crew to see if that helped us (meh).
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| Our cruise followed the red line |
Just before we left that spot, the captain noted that some porpoises had just been spotted near the front of the boat. The girls were cold and stayed inside, but Bill and I ran back out into the rain to check it out. They were adorable! They looked like baby killer whales, playing and jumping so close to the side of the boat that we had to lean over the railing a bit to see (hence no pics - I was not about to hold my phone over the side of a rocky boat in the rain!).
On the way back, we rode by beautiful rocky outcrops to see puffins. The islands looked so mystical in the fog. We also saw a few adorable otters floating on their backs. Our captain announced that humpback whales had been spotted nearby, so we headed over to see. We only spent a short time near the humpback since our 4 hour trip was about over, and it was pretty underwhelming compared to the orcas. My view of the humpback was seeing the top of its back surface slightly, no big jumps straight up into the air with a dramatic splash, no big blowhole action.
In all, we saw more of the animals than we'd expected to see on this trip. The only thing we really hoped to see and didn't was sea lions.
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| Checking off the animals that we saw |
After we left the boat, we met up with Mary and headed to a restaurant she'd found - Woody's Thai. Super busy, always a great sign. Tons of vegetarian options for me and Bill, though the girls ended up sharing bacon fried rice. Everything was delicious and we had plenty extra to enjoy the following days. I'd appreciate that leftover spicy red curry after my sinuses got congested over the next days, a "cold" I'd later learn was COVID. 😬
After dinner, we walked back to the RV park, played on the beach a bit (Zadie's last chance to play with her beloved snails), then got some rest before we had to head out of Seward in the morning.