Chatham Strait is a long channel of water connecting the Gulf of Alaska at its south entrance all the way north to Skagway. It is filled with wildlife and surrounded by tall snow covered peaks. This is the main north-south corridor with many anchorages to explore on Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof Islands. These three islands exclusively have brown bears (grizzlies).
Cannery Cove (named so because there was once a cannery here) in Pybus Bay is across Chatham Strait from Frederick Sound, about the same distance as crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Port Townsend to San Juan Island. This is big water, but fortunately the swells were gentle.
Our first siting of brown bears this trip!
From Cannery Cove, we sailed south in Chatham Strait, encountering wildlife the entire way.
Dall's Porpoise made a beeline for our boat and spent 15 minutes diving back and forth under the bow, perfectly matching our speed.
Sea Otters were hunted to extinction, but have made a remarkable recovery.
As we approached Bay of Pillars, our next anchorage, we found ourselves among schools of herring. In the video below, the dark areas on the surface of the water are thousands of herring schooling near the surface. You can see a wave of herring fleeing an underwater predator and then a whale surfacing to partake in the feast.
Humpback whales are baleen whales-they open their mouths in a food rich area (krill or herring), expand their lower part (the folds in the picture below), and then push the water through the baleen effectively filtering out the food to ingest. With all the large schools of herring about, dinner was served. The whales were lunge feeding, a technique where they erupt from the water, mouths wide open, sometimes quite close.
Mount Ada kept careful watch over all the goings on.
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