Kenai Fjords National Park
Located on the Kenai Peninsula, the landscape of Kenai Fjords National Park has been carved by glaciers for thousands of years. As the glaciers receded after the last Ice Age, they left behind deep, U-shaped valleys that filled with sea water to form what are known as fjords. The forces of ice are still at work in Kenai Fjords where the Harding Icefield still dominates the 669,983-acre park. The icefield, named after President Warren Harding, covers over 700 sq. miles and conceals a mountain range under more than a thousand feet of ice. Year-round storms can drop over 100 feet of snow on the higher elevations and this snow compacts into dense glacial ice to keep the icefield growing.
Today, there are 38 glaciers that flow from the Harding Icefield which is the largest icefield entirely located in the United States. The only part of Kenai Fjords National Park that is accessible by road is at Exit Glacier. It is a popular hiking spot in the summer months where you can explore the path of a retreating glacier. All the other glaciers in Kenai Fjords must be visited by boat and there are numerous tour companies that operated sightseeing cruises out of Seward. The Visitor Center for the national park is also located in Seward right by the harbor where many tours depart.
Originally designated as a national monument in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter, Kenai Fjords became a national park in 1980 in part to protect marine mammals. The waters around Kenai Fjords provide habitat to several threatened or endangered species including humpback whales, gray whales, and the Steller sea lion. Many visitors to Kenai Fjords are surprised to find so much greenery in an otherwise icy place. Until about 200 years ago, much of what is now green was covered by ice. The retreating glaciers have been replaced with a lush temperate rainforest that is found throughout southern Alaska.
Kenai Fjords provides habitat for at least 191 species of birds including the black oystercatcher, bald eagles, and both tufted and horned puffins. In the summer months, large numbers of humpback whales migrate to the coastal waters of Kenai Fjords from Hawaii and Baja California to feed on huge schools of herring. These same waters are also home to three different populations of orcas, or “killer whales”: residents, transients, and offshore. These populations vary based on their hunting techniques which include prey of fish, sharks, and other marine mammals.
In order to visit Kenai Fjords National Park, I booked an excursion with Kenai Fjords Tour which sails out of Seward. My ship, the Orca Voyager, cruised up Resurrection Bay passing Rugged Island as we entered the Gulf of Alaska. There were plenty of birds to view as we sailed through Three Hole Bay where lush coastal forests towered overhead on both sides of the narrow passage. As we turned north and sailed up Aialik Bay, we passed numerous glaciers flowing out of the Harding Icefield including Holgate, Pedersen, and Addison glaciers. There was quite a bit of glacial ice floating in the water as we headed up Aialik Bay. As we sailed past Slate Island, we spotted two black bears on the steep slopes and our guide speculated they had swum over to the island to forage for food.
At the end of the bay sits the vast Aialik Glacier which has a tidewater face of 1.5 miles wide and hundreds of feet tall. Our ship stopped about a quarter of a mile from the glacier’s face and we could hear the unearthly sounds of the glacial ice fracturing under its movement. We also observed numerous pieces of the glacier falling into the water, a process known as calving. The crew of the ship collected some of the glacial ice from the water to allow guests to pose with it for photos or have a cocktail over the ancient ice. There were also dozens of harbor seals resting on the floating ice at the base of the glacier.
On the return trip, we saw numerous Steller sea lions, including some pups, hauled out on Cheval Island. In the distance, we could see spouts and birds swarming over the water, a clear indication that there were humpback whales feeding. However, our captain had received a report of a lone orca further out into the Gulf of Alaska. So, he bypassed the humpbacks for the time being and set on pursuit of the orca. With dozens of pairs of eyes scanning the water, we finally spotted the dorsal fin of an orca off the starboard side of the boat. The guide recognized the orca as a transient female that is frequently seen in these waters. It was truly an amazing sight to see the distinct black and white body of an orca as it broke the surface and then dove deep. We observed the orca for about ten minutes and as she swam further out into the gulf, the ship turned to encounter those humpbacks we had passed.
It wasn’t difficult to locate the humpbacks; the captain just sailed towards the birds swarming over the water. As we approached, the birds on the water took to the air just as several humpbacks breached the surface in a group. The humpback whales were hunting Pacific herring using a cooperative technique called bubble-net feeding. Numerous whales were diving below the fish and blowing a curtain of bubbles upwards, encircling the fish and pushing them towards the surface. The whales then surge upwards through the bubbles, mouths open, to engulf the trapped fish. We got to observe this highly orchestrated hunting technique numerous times. The whales would stay on the surface for about a minute to breath, and then their tails would rise out of the water as they dove deep to repeat the process. The birds fleeing the surface of the water was the sure indicator that the whales were approaching the surface again. It was an amazing experience to see these huge marine mammals hunt this way.
