Alaska Expedition 2003

19thhead

August 19 - 20

8/19 After a rather bumpy and sleepless night of pounding waves, we were still quite a ways away from Wooden...the weather slowed us down a bit, but our dive was not scheduled until 11:00 am, a darned near-civilized schedule. After a bit of whale watching, we ended in a nice little cove outside Port Alexander. We loaded the skiff and head off for a 10 minute, 40 MPH skiff ride to Wooden Island for a very nice dive. On the way to Wooden, we found several pairs of humpbacks doing their feeding dance, in perfect water ballet synchronization. We decided to go to Wooden for the dive while we had a slack tide, and come back to the whales on the way home.

The dive was excellent - clear water, the sun was peering through the clouds, lots of fish activity. Several wolf eels were swimming about, lots of nudibraches of all colors and sizes. In the middle of the dive there was a muffled banging noise, something like a diver loudly splashing into the water. Near the end of the dive, we heard a loud explosion, what you might think of a tank exploding underwater, or the manifold from a set of doubles blowing off. Looked around for a plume of bubbles, but none were to be found. Weird. We get back to the boat to discover that the sound(s) were seal bombs used by the fishermen to scare the seals away from their fish catches.

Being Tuesday, it was slide mount delivery and flightseeing day. You see, early on in the trip is was discovered the ship was running very low on 35mm slide mounts, making evening slide shows a tad awkward. The slides were ordered through Backscatter in Monterey (though apparently they were out as well, but some were found someplace) and shipped FedEx to the Nautilus Explorer in Port Alexander by way of float plane. While the plane was on location, the plan was to have a series of flightseeing trips of three passengers each (pilot + 3) in the Cessna 187 float plane. While the flights were in progress, we spent the afternoon hiking about the forest next to our quiet anchorage. As the afternoon passed, the weather started to turn dark and rainy, thus canceling the last few flightseeing tours as well as the evening beach BBQ and bonfire. 

The evening dive at Wooden was similar to the first, only not as bright. This time we had a swim-by of a very large Stellar Sealion, easily twice the size of the mobbing juveniles at Yasha. On the way back to the mothership, we spot several pair of humpbacks, all doing their flipper rolls, several breaches, and general feeding in perfectly synchronized dancing behavior. We decide that snorkeling with them is the call of the day. Captain Mike explains the subtleties of slipping into the water in a stealthy manner, in front of where the whales are going to end up, and wait for them to arrive. Sounded easy...only it was clear what to expect. I have heard this 'be quiet, be stealthy, the slightest noise will scare them off' speech before. The results are always the same.

We quietly place the skiff well ahead of the approaching pair. The snorklers line up, the first person jumps in, banging the dive ladder on the way out. The rest follow suit, splash, splash splash...real stealthy. Needless to say, the whales disappeared underwater only to surface well on the other side of the skiff. Meanwhile the adrift snorklers, heads bobbing as they try to find the missing whales, are drifting away from the skiff. One smart person managed to slip into the water on the other side and was making a stealthy approach to the feeding pair, only to be outpaced by their water ballet. Once the whales were well clear, we fired up the twin Mercury 225s and picked up the roving band of would-be whale photographers. We arrive back at our quiet cove with the mothership only to find another pair of whales doing their majestic water ballet between us and the shore, no more than 80 feet away. 

Due to the weather, it was grilled hotdogs and potato salad for dinner on the mothership, with beer and Port for desert. We motored to a quiet inland bay for our overnight stay to avoid any stormy bits that might fly by overnight.

8/20 8:45 dive out around the point from Port Conclusion, just around the corner from Port Alexander. I waved goodbye to the skiff and relaxed outside with the low-hanging fog and mountains reflecting onto the mirror-like bay waters. Kim the cook set up a halibut line, and went about her morning duties. Forty minutes or so later a very excited Kim reeled up a rather large halibut, maybe 50lbs. The fish was hauled on the boat and smacked with a hammer several times over a 30 minutes period, until it finally stopped moving. When the skiff came back from the dive, the fish was quickly diced up into several large chunks and many fillets. The skiff was hauled into place, Henry and Ito had sushi for lunch, and the fillets rested in their pan on the back of the boat. We set off to Coronation Island.

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