I’ve been drawn to the Inside Passage almost every year for nearly 30 years and one of the greatest attractions is wildlife in a natural setting – from black bears scavenging for food along the beach, to broaching humpback whales as big as my boat, to bald eagles snatching a fish from the sea.
We love to be greeted by frisky Dall porpoises and rush forward when a team of the black-and-white mammals cruises in our bow wake, slash across our bow, dive beneath the boat and pop back to the surface. They watch us as we watch them and I swear they wink and smile. I take a good digital camera, but the porpoises are much too quick. A video camera is needed.
Orcas – often known as killer whales – have cruised alongside my boat for minutes. Their spike-like dorsal fins rise sharply skyward and the white splashes on their belly and head quickly identify their species. They are voracious feeders on salmon and seals and family animals and they may be the best known marine animals to researchers who have identified pods, or families, and can identify individual members by slight differences in their markings.
The most dramatic may be humpback whales, partly because mature males may grow to 15 meters – that’s longer than my boat. In Alaska’s Glacier Bay the rules are strict – you keep out of their way and do nothing to harass or interfere. Outside the bay on Icy Strait, I like to drift along Point Adolphus and watch whales who don’t know the rules feed along the shoreline and occasionally cruise by.
Early in the season, before salmon runs begin, bears end hibernation as hungry as a bear can be. They head for the beach and scratch the gravel and roll rocks – some weighing hundreds of pounds – in search of anything that looks fit to eat. Often, a female bear will be accompanied by cubs. It’s a good time to watch from a distance with binoculars.
We see ospreys occasionally, and probably confuse them with eagles. They are similar in appearance. Ospreys like to snatch fish from the sea with their talons. Eagles can do that, but they are content to eat the remains of a dead fish found on the beach. Or steal one from an osprey’s grasp. I often clean a fish and toss the remnants into the water. Normally, an eagle will swoop in to collect.
I began thinking about this after a recent encounter with one of nature’s true survivors – the raccoon.
We spent the night at the Back Eddy Marina in Egmont, B.C., after two nights in Princess Louisa Inlet. The night was quiet, but early in the a.m. I stepped outside and was disgusted to see that a trash can had been opened and garbage strewn along the side deck. Past experience helped me quickly identify the culprits as raccoons. Neighbors on the mooring float verified my findings by reporting they had sighted several of the critters on the dock.
I have raccoons in the woods around my home and they struggle, in vain, fortunately, to get into the house via the cat door. Once, in a moorage in Roche Harbor, on San Juan Island, we awoke to find that raccoons had opened an ice chest. They ripped into melons that were chilling in the chest, scattering rind, seeds and melon flesh across the cockpit.
At a remote and primitive moorage in the Dunsmuir Islands of British Columbia I was awakened by thumping on deck above. I peered through the windshield to find raccoons lapping dew that had settled. We now put a pan of water out any time we overnight there.
One mammal I have not met while cruising is the martin. They apparently are hell bent on boarding and invading any boat that comes into their jurisdiction. Friends Pat and Stew Sterling stopped in a hot springs on their way to Alaska recently and found the critters waiting. Pat reports in a recent email newsletter that a martin had found the engine room ventilators on a friend’s boat: “Seems the little fellow was very curious and not at all shy and ventured into their engine room via the vents and even left them a couple of “calling cards.” Once we heard that, Stew immediately went down to the engine room and blocked off the vents!! We already had the hawse holes on the sun deck blocked off after our experiences with the little devils last time here.
“Shortly after (the other boat) left, I heard the pitter patter of little feet. They were all over the place. I got up and saw one sitting on the boarding ladder. I banged on the door but he didn’t pay me any mind, just jumped on and went scampering down the deck. I went to the other side of the salon just in time to catch him trying to figure out how he could get into the sundeck. When he couldn’t quite figure it out, he took off towards the bow. I gave up and went back to bed. Somehow, they did manage to get onto the sundeck and jumped up onto the bar, tugged down the bbq cleaner brush and munched on the plastic bag containing it. Otherwise, all was well. There were no “calling cards” and only a few muddy footprints.”
I had hoped my encounters with challenging critters ended for the season with the raccoon invasion in Egmont. Ellen, who had been tidying the stateroom, came to me with a tissue wadded in her fingers. She opened it and a black ant walked out. Oh, oh.