Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sea otters and sea lions. The two pods don't speak each other's language, and they don't
interbreed.”
Like a glacier calving in your face as your boat sits dead in the water opposite, chunks
of previous ice falls knocking against the hull.
Kenai Fjords Tours—under one name or another—has been giving boat rides to marine
tourists since 1974. Their senior captain is Mark Bartholomew, who has been driving
boats on Resurrection Bay since 1956. When he isn't driving boats for Kenai Fjords
Tours, he's taking his own boat out in pursuit of the elusive silver salmon. His one ambi-
tion in life is to win the Seward Silver Salmon Derby. He worked the Exxon Valdez oil
spill. He has fished commercial as well as sport. This guy has salt water running through
his veins.
Mark has twinkly eyes, fair skin with a perpetual sunburn, and a dry, almost monotone
delivery of commentary that runs something like this: “Ah, those are tufted puffins you
see, those fat little black birds with the colorful beaks diving off the port bow.” A long
pause. “They don't look like they ought to be able to fly, do they?” A longer pause. “In
aircraft terms, we call that overgrossed and underpowered.”
There isn't a cove on Resurrection Bay Mark hasn't visited, there isn't an animal, ve-
getable or mineral he can't call by its first name, there isn't a minute of Bay history of
which he is uninformed. His trigger finger is quick on the microphone when he spots
something he wants us to see, and it's open house on the bridge, where when I visited I
found two young men from Brazil whose lack of English didn't appear to be spoiling their
day, one woman from Texas who hadn't seen this much water in one place before ever in
her life, and an eleven-year old named Jack from Anchorage who seemed to be studying
for his master's license.
The first sight that sends everyone rushing to the rail is always a sea otter, one of which
is invariably surfing the chop a little south-southeast of the breakwater while eating a
clam, and who is always remarkably obliging in showing his or her best profile for photo-
graphers. Sea otters are nature's hams. I think they're all card-carrying members of the
Screen Actors Guild, myself.
My mother was a deckhand on a 75-foot fish tender when I was a girl, and we lived on
board for five years. Due to the Russian fur trade there were so few sea otters left by then
