National Geographic Sea Lion was sailing north today through beautiful narrow channels and wider expanses of the British Columbia coastline. In the morning, National Geographic Photographer Todd Gipstein gave an inspirational talk about his photography. In the afternoon, our Haida Gwaii Cultural Specialist Elsie Stewart-Burton gave us a brief history of Haida Gwaii and then demonstrated the weaving process. Late afternoon offered an opportunity to get creative with watercolors. As the evening light began to fade, we started to turn westward to sail across the Hecate Strait to arrive in Haida Gwaii tomorrow.
5/10/2025
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National Geographic Sea Bird
Tracy Arm
As we continued our way north through Alaska, we had a favorite stop of mine in Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness. We had a rainy day, which I enjoy because we can see at higher elevations since the rain turns to snow and, in turn, the snow feeds the absorption zone of the Sawyer Glaciers. We went out in the Zodiacs and navigated around the icebergs and bergy bits, even collecting a piece for the ice melt-off challenge. Once underway out of Tracy Arm, we saw some humpback whales. One whale had an entanglement of line on its fluke. The line was causing an obvious cut to the marine mammal. The correct authorities were notified about the condition of the whale and location of the sighting. Hopefully the whale will be assisted soon and the entanglement removed. Several other humpbacks were seen shortly after, luckily no entanglements on these. They were demonstrating surface feeding behavior, with one lunge feeding and the other making bubbles to catch its prey.
