We woke up in the morning surrounded by a quiet mist hanging like a blanket over calm waters. National Geographic Venture tucked into a small, protected cove lined with tall trees, and we got started with our morning activities. We split up into groups and took turns going ashore for hikes and exploring the inlets on Zodiacs. Hikers explored the intertidal zone and found a diversity of animals that flourish in the boundary between the ocean and forests, including sea stars, mollusks, barnacles, shorebirds, and even a mink! Some hiking groups went farther inland to explore the deeper parts of the temperate rainforest. They found big trees, thick beds of moss, berry shrubs, and a huge diversity of understory plants. In some places, patches of forest were in the middle of an ecological transition towards a bog ecosystem, with an open canopy and thick, squishy, wet forest floors. We found trees and plants in these boggy areas that we can’t find anywhere else in the forest, including yellow cedar, Labrador tea, and a carnivorous plant called the sundew. After a busy morning, we travelled farther north up narrow and winding channels and fiords, going deeper into the mountains. We passed a majestic waterfall as the last of the mist burned away to reveal large, towering peaks around us. As we approached the very end of the fiord, we noticed a family of brown bears in a nearby meadow. A mom and her two cubs played in the sunny meadow while we watched through our cameras and binoculars until they headed into the forest, and we headed back inside the ship for dinner.
9/22/2024
Read
National Geographic Venture
Green Inlet
Our last day in the Great Bear Rainforest proved to be one full of excitement, education, and awe. After dropping anchor in the idyllic glacial fjord of Green Inlet, we set out to explore the rocky shoreline and forested granitic fjord walls. The dense fog gradually turned into a wispy mist, which exposed different peaks and valleys of the forest as it moved through. We took turns kayaking through a delightful cove that was loaded with ochre sea stars, rockweed, and blue mussels so thick and dense that the rock they were attached to was hardly visible between them. A river otter scurried along the shore and bald eagles soared above us. From the Zodiacs we visited nearly a dozen thunderous waterfalls that were running hard and fast from the heavy overnight rains. We observed harbor seals observing us back; they were quietly periscoping their furry heads up and out of the water as we approached the rapids where they were hunting salmon making their final journeys upriver to spawn. Upon our return to National Geographic Venture , expedition diver Nick Brown shared his extensive underwater video footage from the area. His presentation was interrupted, of course, by whale sightings, which we rushed onto the bow to appreciate.
