Up early this morning so that we could hear the talk by the ranger on Glacier Bay. Very informative as was the later talk by Alice (a native of the area). Glacier Bay used to be entirely covered by glacier around 1750 and has been receding quickly ever since. The glaciers are a result of the little ice age which occurred about that time. It appears that around 1680 there was nowhere near the amount of ice as there is now. As a result of the ice age, the glacier gouged out what is now glacier bay. The highlight was
Margerie Glacier which is holding its own at the moment and not receding. Drops about 7 feet of ice into the bay each day (on average) and sometimes this can be a piece as big as a 7 storey building calving (as it’s called) into the water. We saw some small pieces calve while we were there. Where the glacier meets the bay it is 25 stories high. The intense blue of the glaciers is pretty amazing – this particularly applied to the Reid Glacier.
Another talk this afternoon by another of the rangers on "From Ice to Otters", talking about the changes to the national park as the glaciers recede. Twenty-five years ago, for instance, there were no otters – not enough seashell life to sustain them. Now there are around 4,000 in the park. The talk was excellent and conveyed the rangers love of this area.
We were fortunate that the morning was fine (even though it was cold on deck) as the afternoon turned quite miserable – drizzly rain and very cold. We were to keep an eye out for whales and otters from the top deck but had to settle for indoors in the ‘Crow’s Nest’ and our cabin balcony. We did manage to see some whales but they were quite a distance from the ship.
Made use of the happy hour cocktails again tonight – Tropical Cable Car (quite nice) and then a shower before tea – Jill had turkey and I had a steak.
Off to tonight’s show in a minute and then later on the Filipino crew are putting on a show. There’s no spare time on board ship!!
