Alaska SeaLife Center

Monday, 23 August: Part II

By the time we left Exit Glacier and drove back into Seward, the time was nigh on noon. Stopping at the Safeway near the entrance to town, we picked up some fresh-made soups and sandwiches for an al fresco lunch overlooking Resurrection Bay.

A simple meal in a beautiful outdoor setting.

After lunch, we headed to the Alaska SeaLife Center to spend the afternoon learning about the critters, big and small, that inhabit the state’s marine ecosystem. The center serves as a research and rehabilitation center, and offers close encounters with several species, including marine mammals, octopus and puffins. For this quick trip, we opted to save our pennies and skip the encounter programs. Instead, we purchased a general admission ticket through the Seward Military Resort — a $5/person savings over the $20/person admission price.

The umiak is a type of boat used by both the Yupik and the Inuit.
Its name means “woman’s boat,” as opposed to the kayak, which means “man’s boat.”
The traditional umiak was made from a driftwood frame pegged and lashed
together, over which walrus or bearded seal skins were stretched.

Pacific Walrus Tusks
walrus use their ivory tusks for hauling out on ice, pup defense, and
aggression, but do not use them for digging or eating.

With Royal Princess in town, the center was relatively crowded with cruise ship passengers, but not overwhelmingly so. We took our time enjoying the various exhibits and aquarium tanks, especially the seabird habitat, which offered great photo opportunities for puffins. We also took time out to watch an excellent slide presentation put on by a Park Service Ranger … wonderful images of glaciers.

Here are some of my favorite puffin images from the seabird habitat.

Horned Puffins are well camouflaged when swimming and have adapted to
predation and foraging. Their dark upperparts blend with the dark sea
when viewed by predators above. Similarly, predators and prey have
difficulty seeing them from below because the light underparts look
like the reflection of sunlight.

Horned Puffin stretching after a nap.
when puffins sleep, they often tuck their feet in their plumage.

Juvenile Horned Puffins have dusky head plumage and a darker bill.

Portrait of Juvenile Horned Puffin

Tufted Puffin in its colorful summer plumage.
their winter plumage includes a dark face and a dull bill, and they
lose the yellow feather tufts.

Kissin’ Cousins!

OK – enough of the puffins. Here are some other images from the SeaLife Center.

Nesting pair of Common Murres.
these seabirds don’t build nests, preferring to incubate a single egg
on a cliff ledge instead.

Steller Sea Lion
named for the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller who first described
them in 1741, these pinnipeds are now an endangered species.

Harbor Seal
another of the pinnipeds, they spend half their lives out of water,
hauling out to rest and warm up, and give birth on land.

China Rockfish spend most of their time sitting quietly on the bottom
or in a rock crevice, rarely moving from their home sites.

Sea Pens are named for their resemblance to old fashioned quill pens.
these beautiful animals are covered with hundreds of feeding polyps.
when they retract into the sand for defense, the sea pen expels the
water from its body and shrinks to a much smaller size.

Spot Shrimp
For the first three years of life, these shrimp are male, they then change
sex and become female for the last 2-3 years of their lives.

“Lulu” — a not-so-giant Pacific Octopus
The giant Pacific octopus grows bigger and lives longer than any other
octopus species. Lulu is still growing.

We gave up a few hours of our “weather-gorgeous” afternoon to visit the Alaska SeaLife Center, but it was definitely worth it.