 Previous Day |
Seward 0.0 mi (0.0 km) |
 Next Day |
Take warning, everyone!
It’s a red-sky morning, and oh, what a glorious dawn over Resurrection Bay! The glowing clouds rolled over the spiky peaks in the distance as my friends and I headed to the harbor where the Interceptor and Captain Keoni was ready to take us fishing for some of Alaska’s famous salmon!
We motored out into the Bay, which was deceptively calm amid warnings of afternoon rain. Patches of seabirds clustered over the water where we assumed we would find fish: kittiwakes, murrelets, and puffins. The emerald water was so clear that we could see the darting shapes of fish below! Most of them were cod, mixed with the occasional salmon.
We didn’t have a lot of luck to be honest. There were a whole lot of nibbles that never went anywhere, and we spent most of our time enjoying the sun, watching the birds, and listening to Keoni talk about his annual migration by boat between Seward and Hawaii! We could have stayed longer, but the clouds started to get darker and lash up the waves! By the time we made it back to shore, it was a downpour!
Without a lot of options to do outside once the rain started pouring down, we headed indoors, to the Alaska Sealife Center!
 |
The Sealife Center is full of amazing displays featuring Alaska’s native marine life and seabirds, from tiny jellyfish to gigantic Steller’s sea lions! It was built with funds won from a settlement with Exxon, whose oil tanker Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William sound back in 1989. It took three years to build the Sealife Center, which opened its doors on May 2, 1998, as Alaska’s only permanent marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation facility!
Today, the Center combines the public viewing and education qualities of an aquarium with all the resources necessary to take in and care for animals that have been stranded or injured, then release them into the wild once they’re better! They’ve got over 4,000 creatures in their care! They also fund a lot of field research to study the effects of dwindling ice on the animals of the north and run local education programs!
So after all was said and done, we didn’t get much luck with fish out on the open water but had lots of luck checking out the fish at the Sealife Center! After running out into the rain to get back to the motorhome, we wrapped up our day by cooking up the two fish that we caught. Fresh Alaskan fish is hard to beat!
Come again another day!
Previous Day |
Total Ground Covered: 1,066.5 mi (1,715.7 km) |
Next Day |