Alaska Pt. 2

Leaving from Seward, Alaska, our cruise ship, the MS Ryndam, stopped at 4 different port cities: Sitka, Skagway (Haines), Juneau, and Ketchikan. At each port of call, we could go out and do "excursions," which were basically tours we could pay for through the cruise line. At every port, we did something new and exciting!

What we saw the most of in these 5 cities was aquatic life. Alaskan life is centered upon fishing, and it shows in the amount of study and effort people put into understanding the sea life at Alaska.

The first place that showed Alaska's devotion to ocean critters was the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward. The SeaLife Center is, as an aquarium, open to the public for viewing, but also functions as a non-profit wildlife rescue center. They conduct plenty of research there, as well rehabilitation for sea animals, such as creatures caught in oil spills.

Not only do they have the usual aquarium exhibits behind glass, but bird exhibit is in the pen air; the birds aren't cooped up in glass cages. Instead, they have a small lake (sorta like what you see seals kept in), and there's a net stretched across the ceiling, so the birds can fly around.

You can even get close enough to the birds to touch! This meant, of course, that we got AWESOME pictures.

Of course, the regular exhibits were cool too. There was a touch tank, with sea stars, anemones, and the like, as well as animals behind glass.

We decided to take one of the special tours, the Behind-The-Scenes Tour, and got to see the inner workings of the center. Not only did we see the machinery that pumped all the water throughout the building, but we also got to see the offices of the researchers, as well as where the rehabilitating animals were staying.

The SeaLife Center was AMAZING. We got to get up close and personal with a lot of wildlife, and we also were witnesses to the efforts of some of the most hard-working, kind-hearted people in the world.

The second place was at Glacier Bay. Although we weren't allowed to get off the cruise ship and get close to the glacier, we could take breath-taking pictures of this monstrosity. When we were far away from the glacier, we noticed through our binoculars a dot. As we got closer, we thought it might've been a small boat. But soon, we realized that it was actually another cruise ship!
However, this didn't prepare us for how large the glacier actually was. When we finally got next to the glacier, we saw, to our amazement, that the glacier was five times as tall as the cruise ship! And just for comparison, this is how big a cruise ship is, generally, compared to a person:
Anyway, while the ship was getting closer to the glacier, we got some great pictures of sea lions that were sun-bathing on ice floes.

Scientists also say that there are apparently little creatures called ice worms that live inside glaciers. They burrow through the ice, and are tiny worm-like animals. Never seen them myself, but if biologists say they exist, well then...

The third place that we saw had a lot of sea life was, obviously, underwater. At Sitka, we took an excursion called the Sea Life Discovery Tour. It's a tour inside a semi-submersible, which is a boat with a bottom that is plated with glass so you can see what goes by while the boat is chugging along. We passed through a lot of kelp forests, and a tour guide gave us the run-down on what lives where and eats what. The sad thing is, the water was so green and murky, it was hard to get pictures. But, when the boat was heading back for port, we managed to get an awesome close-up of a bald eagle that was sitting on a sign.