Sitka
The previous entry is Skagway.
June 3
In retrospect, Sitka was the first time we went explicitly looking for wildlife rather than geological formations and coincidentally coming across wildlife. The Sitka shore excursion was “Sea Otter Quest and Raptor Center”, in fact, but first we first had to go through a procedure called “tendering” before getting to shore.
Unlike the other ports we stopped at, Sitka does not have thousand-foot piers to dock cruise ships. There’s a small marina and port facilities to dock, say, 50′ catamarans and fishing trawlers, but that’s about it. Visitors from cruise ships are actually ferried using the ship’s motorized life boats, disembarking the ship from a small floating platform extended from the side of the ship by large hydraulic arms. People in wheelchairs probably wouldn’t be exiting the ship at this port, at least not without difficulty and only for emergencies.
Note that these lifeboats aren’t rickety open-air rowboats (a la Titanic), but fully enclosed motorized launches capable of snugly seating 90 people. In an emergency, the lifeboats can hold 150 plus crew and can probably travel quite a ways under their own power. On the Ryndam, they hang above the round-the-ship promenade, and we walked underneath them almost every day; they’re big boats.
Because the rate of disembarkation from the ship was somewhat limited at this port, passengers interested in visiting the town had to take numbers and wait to be called. We had a shore excursion, so our tender was already scheduled. In fact, we had a morning shore excursion, so we would go off on the first tenders. This turned out to be a good thing, as the tendering queue got backlogged by midday, and a number of people who had numbers weren’t able to get to shore or gave up in frustration, including a couple from our dinner table. (Apparently, the hotel staff didn’t insist that people be ready to immediately disembark when their numbers were called, so passengers hung out in their cabins until the announcement came through, then took their time to get dressed, etc. There was also only one tender disembarkation point from the ship, rather than having two and doubling the capacity (only a fraction of the lifeboats were used for this). People with later shore excursions may have gotten screwed, as their tenders may not have been ready in time.) Sitka was also the shortest stay, with the ship in port for only seven hours, and the last tender to come back from shore scheduled at around 4PM.
We found out later, from the frontpage of a town newspaper, that there were seven cruise ships in port the day before. Ryndam was the only ship there when we were there. I can’t imagine the chaos seven separate tendering operations would have caused, especially given the limited on-shore facilities to receive the tenders. The day before must have looked a little like D-Day with the numerous tenders that would have been in the water, not to mention the boat traffic that comes from day-to-day life in Sitka.
The shore excursion title was slightly wrong: we went to the raptor center before embarking on the sea otter quest. The raptor center is just outside of town. Injured raptors — eagles, hawks, falcons, ravens, owls — are brought to the center for rehabilitation. If the injuries aren’t disabling, they’re treatment aims to bring them back to the wild. If they are crippled, there’s room at the center for them. The center is operated by volunteers from around the country (presumably, there’s a staff veternarian), and, over its history, it has rescued birds numbering into the thousands. The first thing we saw were two large enclosures meant to keep birds safe while keeping them away from the sight and sound of humans; birds in these enclosure are meant for eventual release. At the time, there were three or four eagles and a couple of owls. (No pictures here, as the fine wire mesh and dark glass kept us from getting reasonable shots.) After this stop, we filed into a small lecture hall, where we saw a short video about what the center does. Then, one of the trainers brought in an adolescent bald eagle that was never going to leave the center (injuries to the claws keeps her from effectively hunting).
Bald eagles have up to seven-foot wingspans. They’re huge birds, easy to recognize from a football field away. This one was about fifteen feet away. She was trained not to panic in the presence of large crowds, though we were told not to make much noise, not to stand up, and not to clap. This bird’s destiny was as an ambassador for the center, visiting schools and other lecture halls, to help spread the center’s message. While the trainer was answering questions, he’d feed the eagle scraps of salmon. One person asked why he always looked at his hands after the eagle grabbed the salmon with her beak. Are you checking for injuries? No, it’s to make sure she got all of the salmon. You don’t want to accidentally smear a bit of fish on your shirt or hair.
After the lecture, we had some time to wander the center’s grounds. There are large, open-air enclosures housing other eagles, as well as falcons, hawks, owls and so on. The bird from the lecture was returned to her cage near the center’s entrance. After taking pictures, we took the shuttle back to town.
The “sea otter quest” boat was ready to depart when we got back to Sitka’s port. It was a narrow catamaran, with an upper deck for passengers to take in the sights. The trip would basically loop through the bay and head out to various islands where the guides knew there’d be birds. If we saw whales and otters on the way, that’d be great. As with all wildlife tours, there are no guarantees the animals would put in an appearance.
We actually saw more whales on the this tour than some of the whale watching tours, running into two groups of humpbacks. Whales take four or five breathes — visible spouts on the water — before doing on deep and long dives. On the last breath — on making their deep dive — whales would typically raise its tail out of the water, presumably to get the right diving angle. That tail coming up and going under is the money shot for all us amateur photographers on these tours. That giant tail is only out of the water momentarily, and you have to have the camera pointing at the right spot to catch it. (We didn’t see any whales jump out of the water, Free Willy-style, though one did near the cruise ship during breakfast. But we were on the other side of the ship and didn’t get to the windows in time. The oohs-and-aws from the starboard side of the dining room was impressive, though.)
Trying to get these shots was when I wished my cheap memory card was faster, like one of those Lexar Ultra IIs. The D70 can take three shots per second indefinitely if the card is fast enough to accept them. With my pokey cards (basic Viking 1GB CFs: I think they’re rated at 4x as opposed to 80x on the high-end Lexars), I’d get off three shots and then twitch in mild horror as the camera paused to write out the images while the best tail moments were passing by. I’d run into similar issues the next day at the Hubbard Glacier. So, note for the future: any possible wildlife and/or action shots on the big trip requires the more expensive cards. Don’t skimp: you’ve paid thousands of dollars to get there, and saving $50 on cheaper cards ain’t worth it. And, as noted earlier, that extra stop or two on the long lens helped make acceptable shots possible: don’t skimp on the lens, either.
After chasing around whales, the boat took us to an island bird sanctuary. We had seen some birds near the whales, but this island was teeming with puffins, terns and a few bald eagles. We were able to get close enough to the puffins to actually get a shot of one of them taking off: as it left the water, you can see its feet pumping in time to the wings, for that extra bit of oomph to get airborne (this showed up later when we were looking at the pictures; we didn’t see it with the naked eye). The island was beautiful in itself, a big hunk of gnarled rock with trees growing on it. There were starfish — orange ones and purple ones — clinging to the rocks on the surfline.
Then it was off to find sea otters. We can across two groups of them. The first group let us get close enough to take a few distant “yes, those dots are otters” photos before they dove. The second group, or, rather, one individual of the second group, didn’t give a damn and sort of floated on its back, letting us take pictures of him. He’d even do a jack-knife to touch his toes and roll onto his stomach. Otters are apparently one of those mammals that spend their whole lives at sea. They rely only on their fur (instead of oil) to keep warm and waterproof: they adopt their typical “prayer” pose to keep their front paws/hands from getting cold, using a sort of self-grown muff.
The last leg of the trip took us to an inlet with a wide, low waterfall spilling snow melt into the sea. Floating around the hull were large numbers of jellyfish, which apparently are found in all climates. On the way back, we saw an eagle perched on a rock, which was covered with bird droppings. The boat’s crew served a late snack of smoked salmon on crackers. This was arguably the lightest lunch we had on the whole trip.
We had an hour before when the last tenders would leave, so we walked around Sitka, which was the prettiest ports we stopped it. The downtown had souvenir shops, but was relatively untouched by tourism. Many of the stores looked like they were meant to serve residents as well as tourists, which was a relief from the massed souvenir bazaars of the other towns. We also saw locals up and about, going about their business. I suppose the lack of big docking facilities and the necessity of tendering keeps the pace slower: tourists come in a relatively trickle, as opposed to being disgorged enmasse on the piers. I don’t know what the town looked like the day before we were there, when there were seven cruise ships in the bay, but the tendering facilities can’t have handled that many people. Perhaps each ship got an allocation of landings that it could make.
St. Michael’s Cathedral is in the town center. It’s a Russian Orthodox church, and part of the heritage of the town: it was founded by Russian fur traders before going over to U.S. control after 1867. (The U.S. bought Alaska for $7.2 million. The $200K was apparently the value of the remainder of a Russian contract to supply ice from Sitka to San Francisco, and was tacked on to the original negotiated price of $7 million.) The sea otter quest group gave us vouchers to visit the cathedral, saving us the admissions fee. It was small, with Orthodox artwork on display. Down the street from the cathedral was the town square, with a large totem pole on the green. A statue of a travelling miner stood in front of the main town building. Within sight of each other, you have symbols of Alaska’s past, from the Tlingits to the Russians to the American miners passing through for the Yukon gold rush. A bit further down the street, past where the road bends at the cathedral, were the modern tourist emporiums near the docks.
The tendering operation back to the ship was much like the one leaving the ship, though we had to wait a few minutes just off the ship’s mooring point, because some of the other tours dropped passengers directly off at the Ryndam instead of taking them to port and making them get on a tender. While waiting, I was chatting with a woman who also had a Nikon D70, a recent purchase for this trip. She had a fancier long lens, one of the newer 70-200mm f/2.8 VR ones, though that was stowed away in one of those Lowepro backpacks. She had gone to Nikon school before the trip to learn how to use the camera. I was mildly jealous, as VR would have helped a lot on the boats.
Dinner was casual or semi-casual (or semi-formal) tonight, with a minor twist. This was towards the end of the cruise, and the ship’s kitchen had a few dessert surprises in store for the passengers. On this penultimate night, there was no dessert menu. Instead, the lights dimmed, and the wait staff marched out with baked alaska platters, all lit by sparklers (white cake, topped with ice cream and meringue). Over on the upper dining room, our fat German executive chef (“never trust a thin chef”) introduced his kitchen staff to happy applause and twirling table napkins.
The next entry is the Hubbard Glacier.