A “funny” thing happened when we went on our cruise Tuesday: We took our Canon EOS 500D camera complete with charged battery – uhhhh, somehow I forgot to put the SD card back into the camera 😱😱 (Sometimes I put the MO in MO-ron)! So our marvelous camera complete with a 200-500mm hyper-zoom lens became a “uniocular”. That’s a bi-nocular but for only one eye. Other than that it was functional only to hold our table down. OOPS!! 😢😭. So, we got what pictures and videos we could with our iPhone 6s. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything that drains the battery on an iPhone faster than recording videos.
The tour was terrific. We saw humpback whales, seals, puffins, cormorants and orcas (“killer whales” – though they aren’t whales at all, they are the largest member of the dolphin family) + thousands of “rats with wings” – AKA seagulls. We also saw Bear Glacier, the largest glacier in the Harding Icefield. We got what pictures we could given our photographically crippled state.
Ergo, we decided that we would go out AGAIN Thursday, June 15th. This time we would be “camera-ready.”👍🏻👍🏻. Besides the Canon, I took my iPodPro for videos. It has a terrific lens on it – 6,000 gazillion megapixels or something like that. Today we’ve seen a humpback female and calf feeding; seals, orca, puffins and cormorants, kittiwakes and 4 different glaciers – Bear, Holgate, Peterson and Aialik. HUBBA-HUBBA
So, before we get to our picture presentation, I have a couple of “meteorologically incorrect” questions for everyone that is reading this post:
• About 25,000 years ago much of the northern hemisphere was encased in ice: Alaska; virtually ALL of Canada (in the USA the southernmost remnants of the Canadian icefield are the Great Lakes that, as they melted, became the lakes we know today); All of Scandinavia and even Scotland were all ice covered. Now then, the question: What caused those glaciers to melt? It certainly wasn’t the “advancing technology of man” or “man’s use of ‘fossil fuels’” creating “greenhouse gases” to rise the temperature of the earth. According to scientists (those unassailable paragons of deductive logic) 25,000 – 10,000 years ago mankind was at best loose bands of hunter/gatherers. Wouldn’t the meteorological phenomena that caused the retreat of this glacial age be, by definition, “global WARMING?” NO, this was not due to man. What caused it was the forces of the universe: The cycle of increasing and decreasing temperature of the sun itself; Solar Radiation; the earth’s magnetic field collapsing in upon itself and at times reversing; the wobble of the earth on its axis; the natural variance in the earth’s orbital rotation around the sun (Causing increasing perigees and apogees). EXACTLY NONE of these natural phenomena are within the control of man and all even an exceedingly higher effect on the temperature of the earth than man's level of pollutants. For instance, in the 1783 the Laki fissure system eruption on Iceland spewed forth forth an absolutely MASSIVE amount of ash (14 cubic kilometers or 3.3 cubic miles) into the upper stratosphere. This led to a winter which averaged 1 degree (Celsius) lower around the northern hemisphere.
• A second confounding posit: Scientists (yes, once again those unassailable paragons of reason) tell us that at the end of the last ice age, the Sahara Desert was about like it is now: Except for the area along the Nile river it was desert and largely uninhabitable. But as it says at the "LiveScience.com" Website:
A timeline of Sahara occupation:
- 22,000 to 10,500 years ago: The Sahara was devoid of any human occupation outside the Nile Valley and extended 250 miles further south than it does today.
- 10,500 to 9,000 years ago: Monsoon rains begin sweeping into the Sahara, transforming the region into a habitable area swiftly settled by Nile Valley dwellers.
- 9,000 to 7,300 years ago: Continued rains, vegetation growth, and animal migrations lead to well established human settlements, including the introduction of domesticated livestock such as sheep and goats.
- 7,300 to 5,500 years ago: Retreating monsoonal rains initiate desiccation in the Egyptian Sahara, prompting humans to move to remaining habitable niches in Sudanese Sahara. The end of the rains and return of desert conditions throughout the Sahara after 5,500 coincides with population return to the Nile Valley and the beginning of pharaonic society.
Certainly man's "industry" didn't cause this meteorologic shift is the weather patterns.
That's enough "head scratchers" for our "Global Climate Change" readers for now.
Here are some pictures and videos from the "Seward Swing" of our Alaska trip:
Above: Orcas - typically known as "killer whales" are not actually whales at all. They are the largest species in the Dolphin family. They are the most "intelligent" of all the cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises). Learned behaviors are passed down from parent to young. The "Pods" are ruled by the oldest female. She directs everything. Even telling the males when they can breed and which females they may breed.
Above: A Humpback female and her young. She is "Lunge Feeding"and teaching her young how to do it also. Notice the birds, they start to dive toward the water as the massive amounts of krill or small fish are pushed to the surface by the force of the whale swimming toward the surface with its mouth agape. Interestingly, the weight of the water in the x4 expanding"neck pouch"weighs more than the whale itself. It then forces the water through the baleen attached to its upper jaw. The baleen acts as a sieve - holding in the solid (edible stuff) and allowing the water to be ejected by pressure of the contracting "neck pouch." For all of their size, baleen whales throats are only about the size of a large grapefruit, so the cannot eat large objects.
Above: Two Stellar Sea Lions having a "game" of "king of the hill." They would appear to be young sea lions. Not as big as the ones in the movie below.
Above: This picture above kind of looks like a Stellar Sea Lion version of "the wave" you'd see at a baseball or football game. Stellar Sea Lions are the largest of the "Eared Seals." That means that they have small ear flaps next to their earhole opening which they can turn to hone in on the direction from which a sound is coming.
Above: A picture of a harbor seal relaxing on an ice floe that Irene took near the Aialik glacier. Seals use them for resting; interacting with one another and spotting prey in the water. "True Seals" like this harbor seal only have an ear opening on the outside of their heads on each side. All seals are carnivores eating mainly fish. They only have pegged teeth, so they have to swallow their food whole OR come to the surface and bite into it and throw their heads back and forth and allow the weight of the prey and gravity to provide the torque to tear the chunk off in its mouth.
Above: For 5 days Irene was on a mission, she wanted pictures of a sea otter and she wanted them last month!! The otter union must have had a strike vote. For 3 days at Homer we saw ZERO, zilch, nada, negative bupkis Sea Otters so we get to Seward and Irene is still "on the prowl." She's gonna land her some sea otter pictures or we are going to take up residence in the State of Alaska until we do. Her chant for 5 days was "I oughter see a sea otter." Finally on our 3rd day in Seward one "scab" otter crossed the picket line and gave Irene her heart's desire: Not just a "picture" of a sea otter, but what essentially amounted to a one-on-one "sit down interview." He was 2 feet away and displayed the full ensemble of otter behaviors - floating on his back, spinning, holding a clam in his forepaws as he cracked through the shell with his teeth and ate the insides.
Above: For 5 days Irene was on a mission, she wanted pictures of a sea otter and she wanted them last month!! The otter union must have had a strike vote. For 3 days at Homer we saw ZERO, zilch, nada, negative bupkis Sea Otters so we get to Seward and Irene is still "on the prowl." She's gonna land her some sea otter pictures or we are going to take up residence in the State of Alaska until we do. Her chant for 5 days was "I oughter see a sea otter." Finally on our 3rd day in Seward one "scab" otter crossed the picket line and gave Irene her heart's desire: Not just a "picture" of a sea otter, but what essentially amounted to a one-on-one "sit down interview." He was 2 feet away and displayed the full ensemble of otter behaviors - floating on his back, spinning, holding a clam in his forepaws as he cracked through the shell with his teeth and ate the insides.
Above: Cormorants - these are piscivores (fish-eaters) that dive into the water and use their wings as "fins" to swim under water and catch their prey. Interestingly enough, unlike most other piscivore fish they do NOT secrete an oil that keeps their wings from getting wet. Consequently, between "fishing sessions" they have to get out of the water and let their wings dry out. That is what the cormorant on the left of this picture is doing. Lifting their wings off their body and crooking them allows for a maximum of airflow over them which dries them out.
Above: One of the more hilarious sights to behold is a Puffin trying to take to flight. Their bodies are made for diving, to catch fish to eat. They have to beat those little wings (which make for GREAT fins under water) 300 x per MINUTE to lift themselves out of the water and take flight. Sometimes they are so tired they just give up and rest more before trying again.
Above: 3 pictures of puffins. You can see pretty clearly that the top picture is a "tufted" puffin. That means it has feathers forming a kind of "duck's tail" at the back of its head. It has a kind of "Fonzi" thing going on, so to say. In the bottom picture you can see that fat belly which makes flight harder than possible sometimes when its filled with food.
Well, this post is WAYYYYY long enough already. So, I'll have to save the glacier stuff and geology stuff for the next post.
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