After my brief exploration of Juneau and a sustaining Alaskan grill lunch I was ready for another wildlife excursion this time with a naturalist photographer guide, Stacey. The first part of the afternoon was a short trail walk through the Tongrass Temperate Rainforest. On the way Stacey gave an excellent and succinct guide to taking pictures. I did learn a lot but my super duper 300mm telephoto needs lots of light so having tried on the settings suggested without success I reverted to using the 'point & shoot' professional setting with much greater success as you will see.
The last time I was in a temperate rainforest was in Galapagos in February of this year - a little warmer than today. The lichen hanging from the trees is a good indicator of the purity of of the air. On the way we were able to witness the recession of the glaciers over the last century which is something over 500 metres and today it is reckoned that within 5 years the glacier will no longer terminate in the lake (See photo) which will slow down its rate of recession.
Stacey described how the forest regenerates beginning with Alder which has nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots which enriches the soil. This also explains the thousands of wild lupins which are also nitrogen fixing. Next to develop is Sitka Spruce which grow tall and very strong - it is said that this spruce has the same weight to strength ratios as steel. Lastly comes Hemlock Spruce which is very slow growing but eventually will outgrow the Sitka Spruce.
The final destination on the trail was the 12 mile long Mendenhall Glacier. Glaciers are glaciers so I will not dwell on this one other than to say that since it is only 13 mils from Juneau it is the most visited in the state.
For the next part of the excursion we joined Tim on a very manoeuvrable pontoon based craft for our venture out into Auke Bay in search of Humpbacks. Within 20 minutes we came across a group - not called pods which is reserved for dolphins - of 11 Humpback whales with their distinctive dorsal fin towards the rear of their huge backs - they can be as long as 40 to 50 feet and weigh more than 40 tons. This group of whales was "bubble netting" a form of co-operative behaviour that is peculiar to Humpbacks and which I will say more about in my next blog. We watched the whales for over two hours and although I got some good shots of tail flukes I was to get some even more spectacular shots the following day in Hoonah so I will blog a couple of photos of the Mendenhall Glacier and whale fluke and move on.
Sent from my iPad
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