7/31

Today we started our day at the salmon fish hatchery. Actually pretty cool to see with the returning silver and hoh salmon returning back to spawn. The hatchery harvests the eggs and milk and hatch 250 million salmon. The fish are released back to the ocean after one to two years at the hatchery. Of course the sea lions take full advantage of the retuning fish and gorge themselves on salmon. 

Pics in and around the town of Valdez. 

Valdez Harbor 

Salmon Hatchery

Sea Lions having their way with the salmon. Interesting they would toss them around to stun the fish before they ate them whole. 

Scope pic

In the afternoon we took a 6 hour wildlife -glacier dinner cruise from Valdez. The cruise was awesome with abundant wildlife sightings including sea lions, sea otters, puffins, eagles, jumping salmon, and of course the Columbia Glacier. The captain was great maneuvering the ship through a ton of sea ice to get as close as possible, still 2 miles off the glacier face. The glacier is 2 miles wide, 650 feet tall from the seabed at the waters edge and 30 miles or so long and boy was it cold near the glacier! 

Sights along the way

 Sea Lions sunning themselves. 

Salmon fishing boat that uses nets. Interesting the fish processor send its own boat out to collect the salmon from the fishing boat to maximize the fishing catch. Apparently the fishermen can only fish at certain times. Alaska Fishery’s controls the total catch allowed.

Puffins  (zoom in)

Here is what a Puffin looks like up close.

Iceberg’s 20 miles out from the glacier.

Sea otters catching a nap on the ice

8 miles out from the glacier 

2 miles out from the glacier. Somehow the captain maneuvered the boat through the ice flow. I was thinking thoughts of the Titanic!! Yikes!