Alaska Brown Bears - Day 3

Day 3 – Mon July 27, 2020

The engine fired up at 5:50am and it was time to cross Shelikof Straight. The open ocean was the roughest water of the trip so far, but still nothing compared to the Drake straight on the trip to Antarctica last December.  It was slow going and took us about 5 hours to cross the straight and finally we pulled into Hallo Bay.  This is an area with very unpredictable winds and weather and we were warned that we might not be able to get into the bay, but luck was on our side today, as the weather was beautiful and almost TOO hot really. 

Hallo Glacier coming down off the mountain made for a very cool backdrop against the beach and open meadows beyond.  There was one other boat in the bay when we pulled in and we spotted a mama bear and 3 cubs down near their boat so we decided to head up the beach away from them and over the berm into the open meadow beyond.  After a short hike, we spotted another mama bear and her cub off in the distance, near a stream that crossed the open area.  When we got to the stream and started to walk along the banks, we passed over a lot of bear track including one set of prints that were easily the size of a big dinner plate.  It was hard to miss that you were certainly in bear country now…. Even if you hadn’t already spotted 5 of them before you’d been on land a couple of minutes.

We continued walking down the bank of the stream and lost sight of the sow and her cub.  They must have wandered off into the tall grass on the other side of the river to escape the heat.  We kept walking through and as we came to the top of a small hill, we saw yet another mama bear with cubs, this one had three yearlings with her.   A little behind those 4 was also another bear… most likely an adolescent that had been sent off on his own in the last year or so.

We decided to head down and cross the river and work our way to the far side of the mama bear and her cubs, to get the sun to our back for a better chance at good photos.  This also gave us a chance to make sure all the bears could see us and get used to our presence and we could get a read on how they were going to react to us being there.  It quickly became apparent that the sow and her cubs couldn’t care less that we were there, but the adolescent bear got up and started moving away from us and crossed another stream so it had a little more distance between us.

We found a good spot and settled in to watch these 4… while keeping an eye on the bear across the river to make sure he didn’t decide to come back our way and squeeze us in between him and the mama bear.  The babies and mama just grazed away in the meadow barely even bothering to look up at us.  It was a hot day and after a while, a couple of cubs decided it was time for a water break and one decided even better, that it was time to just lay in the water for a bit to cool off.   The other cub stuck pretty close to mama the whole time and one of the two more adventurous cubs quickly joined them again, while the third continued to just do his own thing.   The guide told us he was the single boy cub and that the two females tended to stay closer to mom than he did.  

We got to watch one of the cubs begging to nurse and the mama bear just totally ignoring her, but she was persistent  and the more noise she made about wanting to nurse the closer the other two cubs got as well, and after a while the mama bear gave in, and brought the cubs closer to us before sitting up and looking right at us and then flopping back onto her back only to be pounced on by her cubs.  The three of them only fed for about 5 minutes before we realized all 4 of them had totally fallen asleep... the cubs right on top of mama. 

After about 20 minutes, mama bear woke up and wanted to get back to eating so she slowly rolled her way from under all that weight and managed to get out from under the cubs without waking them up, and she went back to eating while they just dozed away.   We got some of the best views and photos of her at this point as they were now only about 100-150 feet away from us.  We watched her for a while and then decided it was time to go looking for the other mama bear that had been on the beach with her spring cubs.   There were a few other bears that had also come into the meadow by now, but the 3 little ones would make for better photos.

We found them pretty much where we’d last seen them. All hanging out on the beach.  The three little cubs were much more playful than the older three we’d been watching for hours and they were running around a bit and playing …. And as mama walked up the beach toward us they had to run to keep up with her.  We didn’t get to watch them up close nearly as long as the other group, but it was still fun to see the smaller cubs and watch how different they were when interacting with each other. 

They slowly moved away from us and now we could see the other three cubs finally wake up again after about an hour long nap.  We just sat on top of the berm and watched all the bear in the meadow for her for a while before deciding to call it a day and head back to the boat.  

The bear sightings weren’t over just year though as we crossed paths with one more bear as we walked down the beach.  This one was just sound asleep amongst the drift wood and we almost walked right past without even noticing it.  This one was pretty sleepy from the heat and when hearing us, barely had the energy to lift its head to look at us a couple of times and lay right back down to go back to sleep.

First view of the meadow after coming over the berm from the beach

First river we crossed and the view beyond

Another view of the meadow

First view of the mama bear and her three cubs we would watch for hours

Was so hot out, this cub needed to take a dip in the river to cool off

Three spring cubs tryin to keep up with their mama - you can see the heat shimmering

Cubs finally caught up to mama

Antarctica - Day 9 - Part 2

December 6, 2019

After lunch, it was time to kick back a bit in the lounge and share stories with people about the trip so far.  A number of people were working on photos but I was just spending most of my time making 2 full backups of all the shots I'd taken so far.  I wasn't sure if I'd ever get down here again, so wanting to be extra careful and get two copies of everything JUST in case one of my hard drive backups went bad.

While waiting for my group's turn to get out on the Zodiacs and cruise around Cierva Cove, there was some big excitement, as a group of whales came up really close to the ship and were actively feeding. Until now most whales we'd seen were hundreds of yards away but this group was probably less than 50-75 feet from us.   Everyone grabbed their cameras and rushed to the deck in hopes to get some great shots.

There was a moment when we all thought we were going to see something extraordinary, when we could see the whales begin to build a bubble net!  I don't know how well you can see it in this photo, but the whales began to circle and blow bubbles which helps them gather their prey into a nice tight group so that they can then swoop up and get more in each mouthful.  If you've ever seen video or photos of a group of whales with their mouths wide open punching through the surface of the water, that's what I thought were were going to see here!

Everyone had their camera's ready and you could hear the excited voices thinking we were about to get a GREAT show, but sadly this group of whales was just going to tease us, and they ended up feeding just below the surface instead. So we didn't get those amazing shots, but still got a really fun show as the whales just slowly moved back and forth next to the ship, slowly feeding and from time to time showing their dorsal fins, and every once in a while, giving as a quick view of their tails as the would go into a deeper dive for a few minutes.   Here are just a few photos of the whales in action: 

They stayed right next to us for close to 20 minutes before finally moving on and out of site of the ship. Even though we didn't get the epic type of show, it was still so very cool to watch them up so close to us.

At 16:00, it was finally time for the second half of us to climb aboard the Zodiacs and head out into the cove.  There was a lot more ice here although much of it was smaller than what we saw yesterday. The Pro that was in our boat had scoped out a very cool area with the first group, and asked our driver to hurry and take us there first to start the ride.  The thinking was it was much further out than most of the other Zodiacs would go so we'd have it all to ourselves, and if we started off as far away as we dared go, we could take our time out there, and then slowly work our way back to the ship.

Cierva   Cove  lies   at   the   western   side   of   the   Antarctic Peninsula in the northern
entrance of the Gerlache Strait. In the  vicinity,  there  is  an  Argentinean  station  (Primavera
Station).  It  is  truly another beautiful  area  surrounded  by  spectacular glaciers and as we headed across the water you could really see just how big those glaciers were!

 The first shot most everyone wanted to take of course, was another photo of the ship from on the water just below it  After that, we were off and running across the bay.

Here are just some of the views we had once we got to the far end of the bay. It's really hard to judge how tall these glacier walls were, but if I had to guess, I'd say they were about as high as a 6 story building.

Once we all shot tons of photos in and around those big glaciers, we began to slowly head back toward the ship and pass a number of very interesting looking icebergs.  One cool thing I started to spot on some of them, were these long icicles hanging down from the edges, where you could see that the snow on top had begun to melt during the warm days and as the water ran down and dripped into the sea, it would freeze again at night as the temps dropped.  It was pretty interesting to me...  

Here is a quick look at a few of the rock formations poking out of all that ice and snow.

The icebergs here are so seriously blue when the light hits them just right.  Here you can really see that blue and how it almost seems to glow from deep inside.

Just for fun I'm including a couple of shots with another Zodiac in the photo for scale.  We were cruising around this one berg with a cool arch in it when suddenly another Zodiac pulled in front of the arch on the other side.  We were soon all shooting photos of each other through the arch. LOL

In this shot, you can see just how full the bay was with all kinds of small chunks of ice.  I'm guessing most of these were from all kinds of small chunks breaking off of the big glaciers from earlier and then those chunks slowly melting and breaking down over time.

Once back on the ship, it was time to get out of the extra layers and waterproof stuff and into street clothes.  Before dinner was served, there was a quick lightroom class on the Develop module. It's always interesting to me to see and hear how others use Lightroom to edit their photos.

There was also a quick briefing by the expedition leader about tomorrows activities and then it was off to dinner.   The first few days on the ship, a group of 6 of us had found a nice small and quiet back room to sit and have our meals in.  Turns out the secret was out and when we got in the dining room, our table had been overtaken by another group.  We moved to another table in the room even though it wasn't set up for meals, and the crew was more than happy to bring us what we needed to sit there since they knew we'd used that room every meal until now. 

After dinner there was one more talk given.  This one was on the mammals of Antarctica and then after that it was everyone to themselves.  Once again, the large majority of people headed off to bed, and the usual suspects kept looking out the window, knowing we could possibly had yet another beautiful sunset ahead of us.  I mean, who can sleep when the weather looks like this?

Once again we stayed up really late, taking lots of photos, and then when the light stopped changing and we felt satisfied with our photos, it was time to head off to bed to try to get at least a few hours of sleep.