Adding a new port of call to a treasured cruising destination is always a thrill. And with scheduled arrivals in Klawock on select Regent Seven Seas Cruises® itineraries, guests are in for some unique wildlife viewing in a location steeped in Alaska Native Tlingit culture.
Located along the central western coastline of Prince of Wales Island, Klawock is home to black bears, sea otters, bald eagles, summer salmon runs, and a fascinating gray wolf predation behavior only recently documented here.
We checked in with onboard Alaska naturalist and expert Dr. David Plourd, who has a degree in marine sciences from Pepperdine University and an MD from UCLA, to hear more about what guests can hope to see in these wilds—both with binoculars and their bare eyes.
For roughly 30 years and over the course of more than 80 visits and explorations in Alaska, Dr. Plourd has experienced dramatic, first-hand encounters with Alaska wildlife and sea life. He shares what you might expect to bear witness to in the waters around Klawock:
Plourd: You can find wildlife pretty much anywhere on the planet, but Alaska, and Klawock in particular, affords a unique opportunity to come up close and personal with such a diverse array of wildlife—from spawning salmon to soaring bald eagles and large bears to even the occasional wolf and wolf pup.
Klawock is known for a very rare wild wolf behavior where juveniles are predating on salmon. Wolves predate in packs. They’re cooperative hunters, like orcas—it’s a sign of intelligence. And wolves are known for taking down large game, like elk. In Klawock, after wolf pups have been weaned and are no longer eating regurgitated food and nursing from their mothers, they begin heading out to forage on their own. But they’re the low dog in the wolf pack hierarchy. In Klawock, there’s a unique geographic waterway system that goes beyond an inlet with estuaries and saltwater streams draining out to sea. That’s where the salmon are.
Wolves aren’t adept at hunting salmon like bears are. But salmon get trapped in this estuary area near the intertidal zone between low and high tide, and it’s perfect for wolf pups, who have easy access to feeding. Alaska gray wolves are born in April and May and are weaned after a couple of months, so guests cruising in June, July, and August might see this rare kind of predation during a call in Klawock.
Plourd: July and August are peak months. At that time of year, if you hear splashing in the water, it can only be two things–salmon splashing as they work their way upstream or a black bear running through the water in pursuit. In the Klawock Inlet, during those months, the sockeye and coho salmon are coming back from the ocean and running upstream, where they will reproduce and immediately die. Black bears feast on the salmon here, and they’re incredibly skillful salmon hunters. They’re omnivores, so they eat anything and everything, but until this point, it’s likely been things like berries, foliage, and skunk cabbage. The salmon are their favorite prey once the runs occur.
And where there are salmon and bears, there will also be bald eagles. Raptors grasp their prey with their talons—a survival adaptation that means they don’t have to go in face-first to hunt. Their talons are like having a fist full of fish hooks, with three in the front of the foot and one on the back of the foot called a hallux. Bald eagle adults weigh 10 to 12 pounds yet can grab a fish almost half their weight and fly with it. Their eyes are like a telephoto lens. It’s often quoted that their vision is 30 times better than ours. What I tell guests, to put that in perspective, is that a bald eagle’s visual acuity allows it to see a salmon sitting two feet underwater while the bird is perched atop a 200-foot-tall Sitka spruce at a distance of two miles away. It’s astounding.
Plourd: There are lots of sea otters in the Klawock Inlet, both in the salt water and in the estuary. Sea otters have no adipose fat, so the only way they stay warm is through their fur. It has a million hairs per square inch (by comparison, a human head, before balding, only has about 100,000 hairs total). If you see a raft of sea otters, take out your binoculars. You might spot a mother on her back with a lighter-colored pup on her belly. The pup’s fur, lanugo, is much different from the mom’s. It’s waterproof, so it lets them float if they fall off mom’s belly. But they can’t dive with it to get food like urchins, crabs, and clams on the seafloor. It’s like nature’s built-in life preserver. After 8 weeks, the pups have to molt to get a mature coat to be able to dive.
Plourd: The Klawock Totem Park has a masterful carved collection of replicas of original totem poles. Klawock is a significant center of Tlingit culture, so you don’t want to miss it.
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