We also took some time before the cruise to go to the new SeaLife Cenger. Well worth it and can rival any aquarium in the L48...built with Exxon Valdez fines...top notch!
4 hours to get to Resurrection Cape...enough for me with a boatload of kids!!
As you probably already know, Rob and self were invited by the AGSD to join their Homer/Seward field trip. This included an oceanography program aboard a boat for 6 hours, a visit to the Center for Alaska Coastline Studies (spent the night in a Yurt), a visit to the Seward SeaLife Center (awesome!) and a 4 hour oceanic voyage around Kenai's Fjiords for whale sighting and marine fauna watching...my previous blog post detailed the trip to the Peterson Coastal Studies center on the Kachamak Bay (part of the Kachamak National Park).
Here are some handy tips to help enjoy this tour more in case you were interested:
Our tour was a limited time offering – just during the whale migration in April.
Includes free lunch (Caesar chicken salad wrap, matchstick carrots, Sweet & Salty granola bar).
Free coffee and tea, and apples (I think they were free??).
They also pass out free fresh baked chocolate chip cookies as you’re returning to dock.
Rob really liked that!
You could also bring your own snacks and/or (2nd) lunch for those big eaters. The tour was four hours long (average length), and my bunch eats more than they lunch they provided for us in a 4 hour period.
Bring (really) warm clothes – although our cruise was in the spring (Alaska spring ha!), with the winds blowing as the boat moves, and the unpredictable weather of Seward, you want to make sure to be warm enough.
There is an indoor cabin with large windows for viewing, but it’s kept only marginally warm. After about two or three hours, I was frozen inside and out and couldn’t get warm until we got back to our hotel.
Bring your camera! The captain makes extra effort to get as close as possible (without disturbing the animals), so you can get a good view of them.
We saw a lot of wildlife ...no whales unfortunately but I have included a photo of the time I saw them on the Prince William sound so you can get an idiea of what they do look like when they are in sight!It was pretty choppy and I got soaked. Rob came out sporadically when I called him to look at something. Black bears and mountain goats came out from their caves and ledges...that was cool. Also bald eagles and all sorts of birds of the sea. The puffins are not out at this time, they migrate later on and use the same rookeries on the cliffs as the gulls do...weird huh? but economical in these hard times with rising cost of habitats...ha!
Saw a couple of rocks covered with large sea lions, the larger of the seals. Some of us got a bit seasick but on the whole everybody seemed to be weathering the weather fine. An incredible experience!
Sea lions are the largest of the seals (except for the Elephant seal) and can weigh upwards of 2 tonnes.
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