The Stuffted Tufted Puffin and Other Tales

Story by Nicole

On Friday we took an all-day cruise out to Northwestern Glacier. We were already excited about it because our kayak trip guide, JD, had gotten so excited when we mentioned it. Apparently it’s a fairly remote area and they haven’t been doing cruises out there very long, so not a lot of people have ever seen the glacier up close.

A glacier coming down toward the ocean (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We had mostly chosen this cruise because it emphasized seeing glaciers instead of wildlife, and Jason (probably correctly) thought that going on a cruise specifically to see wildlife was a good way to not see wildlife. Besides, we were more excited about seeing glaciers anyway.

We did see a lot of glaciers. I cannot remember all of their names and I was bad at taking notes, so you’ll just have to appreciate the pictures. Fun glacier facts that may be slightly inaccurate: glaciers are blue because the snow has condensed so much that they only reflect the blue light back, and they take about 15 years to condense this much. We have glaciers in Colorado, but the ones in Alaska are on an entirely different scale.

Another glacier (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Deep cracks in the glacial ice (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The moon appears above a glacier (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we got to Northwestern Glacier, we sat for a while and watched for glacier calving. We saw several chunks of ice come crashing down into the water.

The glacier calves near the water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Calving from another side of the glacier (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We did see a lot of animals. We saw lots of birds, including red-faced cormorants, black oystercatchers, horned and tufted puffins (Jason’s favorite), gulls, and some others. Our captain told us to look out for stuffted tufted puffins, which are puffins that have eaten too much for them to fly away, so they just flap along on the surface of the water and are unable to take off. Once he mentioned it, we saw them everywhere. Apparently puffins frequently eat too much.

Puffins flying low over the water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A bait ball of birds catching food (Photo/Jason Rafal)

In front of Northwestern Glacier, there were also a lot of seals laying out on chunks of ice that had broken off of the glacier. They stay out of the water for long periods of time to stay warm, so our captain was careful to keep the boat far away enough to not flush them into the water.

The seals in front of Northwestern glacier (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Seals watching us (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We also saw a few humpback whales. Until you see the tail, a humpback whale really looks like the Loch Ness Monster. We followed a couple of whales around until we saw the tails - tail up, whale down, as the captain said.

Small signs of a large whale (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Whale tail (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We also saw some seal lions (look closely) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On the way back, we stopped at a beautiful waterfall to take pictures. Our captain, very impressively, kept the boat at almost a standstill about 5 feet from the waterfall while everyone took pictures. In some semblance of order, the crew lined everyone up and took pictures of them one-by-one instead of dealing with the usual barage of selfies.

Pretty waterfall (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Us with the waterfall (Photo/Jason Rafal)

With that, we headed back to Seward. The cruise was a little long - 9 hours - but we got to see a ton, and it was worth it.

A last view of the area (Photo/Jason Rafal)