Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
that whenever she did spot one, she'd haul me up to the bridge and point it out. Now the
sea otter is protected, and they've come back so well and in such numbers that my cousin
Hank, a commercial fisherman in Cordova, calls them a nuisance. I still get a thrill when I
see one, though.
The next sight Mark points out, on the western shore, moves us from sights biological
to sights historical. Before us sat the barely discernible remains of Fort McGilvray, one of
the installations built in response to the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands, which
act woke the United States to the fact that Seward was the only year-round, ice-free, deep-
water port with a railhead in Alaska. This invasion, Mark tells us like he's reporting it
first-hand for the Associated Press, led to the construction of the Alaska Highway in ten
months “by men who can only be described as heroes,” to the construction of Port Whitti-
er as a back-up deep-water port, and to the fortification of Resurrection Bay.
He pulls away from shore at a considerate, nearly no-wake speed so as not to disturb
the “approximately four million kayakers” who have landed their craft on the beach be-
low. We steam out of the bay and begin to turn west toward the Chiswell Islands and Aia-
lik Bay, but wait, Mark spots a spume to the south. He thinks it's a finback whale, he says
over the loudspeaker, and lectures us on how rare it is to encounter a finback whale, how
privileged we are to see even one, and then suddenly, they are everywhere! Ten, maybe
twelve, broad brown backs with the tiny dorsal fins that give the finback its name, blow-
ing spume to the south and east and three of them, two the size of a railroad car and one
the size of the boat we're sitting on pass us not even a hundred feet off the starboard
beam. Even Mark is speechless.
It is such a beautiful day, the sun shining and the sea as close to flat calm as it ever gets
out here, that Mark says, “Usually we go to the glacier first, but it's so nice out, let's head
for the islands before the wind blows up.” We head southwest for about five minutes, and
suddenly the boat takes a hard right rudder and now that we're all experts in thar she
blows we see instantly what we're headed for: a humpback cow and calf, sounding in
front of the western shore of Aialik Bay. The plumes of spume hang in the air like ex-
clamation points, black backs gleam wetly in the sun, and Mark kills the engine and calls
it out, “Okay, they'll surface again and then dive, showing their flukes.” One does exactly
as he describes, the curved, balanced tail perfectly outlined against the deep blue of the
