Arctic Traverse: Bleik Canyon and a Zodiac Tour

We awoke on September 5th, 2022, to the Endurance sailing above the Norwegian Sea's Bleik Canyon, with depths up to 3,000 meters. Each cabin had a video screen that, among other functions, could mark our location.

The upwelling of nutrients here attracts all kinds of oceanic life, and small fishing boats abound.

Our goal, however, was spotting marine mammals. Some watched from the bridge, where masks were mandatory,

while others were out on deck.

Orcas were in abundance, including family groups. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

Some spotted sperm whales, but I managed to miss them.

 After a while the ship sailed on, and before lunch Joan and I attended a mandatory briefing on using Endurance's zodiac fleet. After lunch, we set out on drizzly zodiac cruises.

We passed by islets and summer homes,

Chilly weather above the Arctic Circle.

while the Endurance awaited our return.

In a less-than-usual step, we disembarked from the zodiacs such that we were allowed to tromp through the "zodiac garage," where the craft are stored, to reach the mud room, where we kept our boots and rain gear.

After cleaning up, we gathered in the lounge where the expedition leader, Brett Stephenson, hosted, reviewed, and briefed us before Captain Oliver Kreuss' welcome-aboard cocktail party.

Despite the weather a jolly time was had by all, and we looked forward to tomorrow's promised landings.

Arctic Journey: Dundas Harbor

August 4th found us near the southeastern end of Devon Island, anchored off Dundas Harbor, a settlement founded in 1924 by the Canadian government with the intention to curb foreign whaling and otherwise maintain Canadian sovereignty in the far north. Nobody has lived here since 1951.

There were two smaller boats also anchored here.

Dundas Harbor is in red in the lower right of this map.

It was a wet landing, stepping from the zodiacs into a few inches of water on a shallow beach strewn with flat shingle rocks.

The guides all have a rifle against the possibility of encountering a polar bear, and in the upper left of the above photo a bear spotter is heading off for higher ground.

The morning was overcast and chilly. Our first stop was at a group of Inuit (Thule) dwelling foundations, with Vincent Butler (Vinnie) eagerly recounting the history of human habitation here. He's the guy at far left with a rifle.

Here Vinnie is showing us a walrus skull.

At water's edge artifacts and middens were abundant. Here Vinnie describes a stone tool.

Following along with us was Stevie Aluaqiaq, from Qikiqtarjuaq, Baffin Island. Stevie is a hunting guide and professional diver who works with Lindblad when they visit this part of the world. He will spot a polar bear before anybody else on the ship can.

In this photo Vinnie is showing is the exposed bones and shells from an eroding section of midden. Dog, walrus, polar bear, and whale bones are all here at this settlement site.

This foundation contains a number of large whale bones, such as vertebrae, which were probably used as structural elements. In summer, when skins were stretched over the foundation, whale ribs might be employed as well as valuable driftwood to support the skins.

After climbing a low rise we saw the distant, abandoned Dundas Harbor RCMP buildings, in the center of this photo (click to enlarge).

We approached the buildings in several different groups, to avoid mobbing each building and to maintain a good guest-guide ratio. Some groups had also taken a less roundabout route.

Down at the beach were scattered pieces of a beluga whale skeleton.

We arrived at the main building.

Three men were sent to this isolated location in August 1924, and their only communication with the outside world was a supply ship once a year. Before the three-year assignment was finished, one had committed suicide and one had died in a hunting accident. Their graves we shall see later.

There are two other buildings in Dundas Harbor, a storehouse and an outhouse.

We spent most of our time exploring the main building.

Some, including Jack, the ship's doctor, took advantage of the windows.

There isn't much remaining: rusting bed frames, bottles, batteries, newpapers, and graffiti.

Behind the buildings, on a slight rise, is the cemetery.

We approach it.

There are four headstones or graves here; I took a photo of three: the two RCMP constables, and the baby of a daughter of one of the Inuit special constables sent to Devon Island to help the Mounties. The fourth is of a Scottish whaler.

After everyone rejoined the Explorer we continued down the coast of Devon Island. Here, we see a glacier that has clearly been retreating.

Around 3:30 we were visited by a pod of four orcas. The orcas can swim much faster than our ship can sail, so they were free to leave at any time, but they played with us, diving under the ship to appear on the other side, racing ahead and then disappearing to reappear in another direction, and generally having a good time. There were two females, a calf, and one male (the one with a dorsal fin the size of a sail).

When they swam by the ship close to the surface, you could see their markings. Note not only the orca at bottom of this photo, but the one at the top. Click to enlarge.

More commonly I got a picture of their back.

Here, note the blow on the far left just emerging from the water; the orca began exhaling before the she breached the surface.

This afternoon also included two lectures, one being The Franklin Expedition: The Boys on Beechey, which was interrupted yesterday by wildlife spotting, and Life and Times of the Polar Bear. After dinner the classic black-and-white silent movie, Nanook of the North, was played.

The sun never went down, but by pulling the shade and blocking gaps with books and tissue boxes, Joan and I were able to darken our cabin enough for a comfortable sleep.

Sailing the San Juans: Orcas Island Surprise, and an Orca Watching Transfer

Several of our group started the next day (June 2o) with an early-early morning hike with Melissa to Cascade Falls in Moran State Park. I "slept in," which meant having breakfast at 7:00am. After breakfast we followed Melissa for her big surprise, which was at the Orcas Island Historical Museum.

Outside there was a sculpture, a requirement for any town in the San Juan Islands, or so it seemed.

We arrived well before the regular opening hour of 11 AM, but one of the advantages of traveling in a small group with as enthusiastic a leader as Melissa is her ability to schedule a private showing of a valuable object. We were about to see a 14,000 year old bison skull -- not a replica, but the original -- that had been found on Orcas Island along with 98 bones or bone fragments.

This skull is from the extinct giant bison (Bison antiquus). Some of the 98 bones show marks indicative of butchering with tools, strongly implying human population of the region 800 years before the time of the Clovis culture. We also saw a cast replica of a tibia with probable cutting marks on it.

It is not easy to decipher the history of the islands during this era, with the rising and falling of sea levels with the advance and retreat of the Ice Ages, but this find is a huge clue.

Afterwards Melissa showed us her sea-mammal cord. In the back yard of the museum, she unrolled a long cord which had a tag at different locations marking the size of different sea creatures. Thus, the tag for the harbor porpoise was only a few feet from the beginning of the cord. The tag for the blue whale did not appear until the cord was stretched across the grass, filling the yard on the diagonal. Melissa's tangible demonstration was a warm-up for our combined orca-seeking expedition and transfer to San Juan Island.

While the bus took our gear by ferry, we boarded a whale-watching boat in Deer Harbor. When we first arrived at the harbor, the tide was definitely low.

Some of the boats tied up there did not appear to have moved in recent history.

Our orca-watching boat, the Squito, has both indoor and outdoor seating. (Orcas are not whales, they are the largest member of the dolphin family, so I don't dare call this a whale-watching trip, even if the colloquial name is "killer whale.")

The Squito started motoring down a particular channel, based on the current reports of orca spottings. There are innumerable minor islands in the San Juans, and we passed a group of seals hauled out on a rock in front of one of them.

At one time a wealthy owner of a private island stocked it with exotic animals. Of course, introducing them onto a small island that he later lost interest in did not work out well. Nonetheless a few of the species still survive on the island, which we sailed past.

Then our captain heard a report that orcas had been sighted on the west side of San Juan Island. This was J pod, and the designation requires some explanation: orcas in the Pacific Northwest have (so far) been divided into "resident" groups, "transient" groups, and "open ocean" groups. The resident groups spend much of the year in a particular area, although that area may be a hundred miles long and wide, and they eat fish, primarily salmon. They are organized into familial groups called pods, and individuals within each pod can be identified through their markings. In the San Juans, there are three resident pods, J, K, and L. This year, 2011, K pod blew through quickly, and L pod had not yet been seen.

In contrast to the resident groups, transient groups pass through unpredictably and eat marine mammals (seals, dolphins, porpoises). Needless to say, the local seals can quickly identify whether a pod is resident or transient and get out of the water fast if it's a transient pod.

We changed direction and about forty minutes later arrived in the area where a portion of J pod was swimming north. Orcas can swim and sleep (resting at least half of their brain) at the same time, which is what J pod was doing when we first saw them. They continue to breathe, of course, but they don't dive or engage in any hunting or exploratory behaviors. Here, they have just passed a group of kayaks. The photo is an accidental panorama; I took a picture of the orcas, at far left, and another of the kayaks, at far right, and they by chance overlapped enough to stitch them together.

If you look above and to the right of the orcas, just at the top of the rock face, you will see a white bench (click on the photo to expand it). The human residents of the islands know where the orcas can frequently be seen, and want to observe in comfort.

While the orcas were "just swimming," I accumulated dozens of photos of backs and fins. For all I knew, this might be the best photo opportunity of the trip, and I had plenty of room on the camera's memory card. To see these creatures at all was a privilege. Here is one of my fin photos.

There are rules and regulations for orca-watching that are designed to prevent human activity from interfering with their lives or driving them away from their home area. Recently the keep-away limit for boats was raised from 100 yards to 200 yards; a boat is to approach no closer than that radius. Also, the boat should not park itself in front of the pod's travel to deliberately intercept them. This is yet another example of the rule to always take binoculars with you.

We were not alone in our quest.

The sleeping behavior does not separate the youngest orcas from their mothers; they will swim close enough to maintain physical contact or swim over the mother's back.

After an hour J pod began to wake up, and we saw spy-hopping behavior. The orcas indulge in human-watching behavior just as we watch them.

Then it was time to sail into Roche Harbor on San Juan Island, be reunited with our luggage, and check into our rooms at the Quarryman Hall. Those rooms were definitely top-notch. Joan and I had one with a balcony overlooking the harbor, which by no means fits into just one photo.

We had a snack at the harbor to supplement the snacks on board the Squito, and then headed off to visit the historic site called English Camp.

Most of our time at English Camp was spent on a short hike to Bell Point. This photo looks back at the historic structures of the main encampment area.

The path was level, with both sun and shade and views out onto Garrison Bay.

By this time we were ready for dinner, and we began driving back to Roche Harbor to pick up the non-hikers in our group. But we had an unscheduled stop on our way. There was a cluster of cars pulled over, and pedestrians were sitting in the middle of a side road, favoring the shade. What was going on? Our bus pulled over and we joined the audience. Creatures -- eagles, ravens, and a fox, at least -- were investigating what must have been a kill in a grassy strip beyond the side of the road, and the humans were investigating the creatures. It seemed a very strong coincidence, and perhaps a human had placed the kill in this conspicuous and convenient location.

The ravens were the most aggressive.

When the ravens departed, a fox visited.

The eagles just watched, intrigued but unwilling, for whatever reason, to challenge. They watched from the sky,

and both juveniles and adults watched from the trees.

But the eagles never, as long as we watched, came down.

We picked up the remainder of our group, and by the time we passed the kill site again, everyone and everything had departed. We drove on to the one real town on the island, Friday Harbor, where the ferries dock and shopping abounds.

View Larger Map

Dinner was welcome, and the flowers outside the restaurant provided my final photo for the day.

 Tomorrow would be another busy day on San Juan Island, by land and by sea.