DAY 7: At sea, our second day, sipping coffee on the verandah off our cabin, Carolyn spots them first. One, two, then half a dozen, then too many to count sea otters floating along on their backs. With characteristics we often think of as "human" (playful animals who use tools, maternal to their young to the point of doting), this biggest of the weasel family was hunted almost to extinction. As the only marine mammal without blubber, the luxuriously dense fur they developed to protect them from frigid waters was almost their undoing. An interesting fact, while the average human has 20,000 hairs on his or her entire head (and, safe to assume, a far lesser number for many along with us on this ship), sea otters have 1 million hairs per square inch.
As we travel past the otters, struck by just how cute a weasel can be, quite literally without interruption we find ourselves surrounded by a pod of Humpback whales blowing tall spumes from their spouts, casually showing flukes as they dive, here at what the Tlingit call Sit' Eeti Gheeyi, the Bay that took the place of the Glaciers.
It's outside my "beat" to talk about blue ice and waterfalls and so much beautiful writing is easily found on the subject, I will only report that an aerial survey just a few years ago (2005) of some 2,000 glaciers noted 99 percent of them retreating. The world is warming and its creatures are suffering.