Greetings from Amook Pass and Munsey’s Bear Camp. Today is sunny, calm, and beautiful, but there’s a bite in the air, and it’s beginning to feel like autumn. Overall, we’ve had a cool, windy summer, so we are enjoying every moment of this sunny, breathless August day.
Guests often ask me if I ever tire of seeing the beautiful sights and amazing animals on Kodiak Island. My answer is, “Absolutely not. Each day is different, and I never know what we will see.” This summer, our guests and we had a front-row seat to a gruesome, fascinating saga. I will tell you more about it in a moment.
We’ve worked hard to accommodate parties who were booked last year but decided, due to Covid, to move their reservation to this year. Since we already had several parties booked for this summer, we opted to work straight through the summer with very few breaks. We’ve learned this pace is too exhausting and not something we plan to do again, but we’ve had wonderful guests, and they all seem happy to travel.
We enjoyed excellent pink salmon fishing in beautiful Brown’s Lagoon in July. We’ve also had good halibut fishing when the wind allows us to go to our favorite spots. We have not seen many silver salmon yet, but they should arrive soon.
After munching on berries for a few weeks, the bears are now concentrating on salmon on the small streams and rivers in Uyak Bay, and Mike and our guests see more bears each day. They saw 15 bears yesterday, and several fished in front of them. My favorite bear photos so far this summer picture two young bears wrestling and playing on a log.
Killer Whale Chasing Minke
Fin whales are finally entering the bay, and we see more of them each time we cruise toward the mouth of Uyak. The most spectacular sight we’ve seen so far this summer, though, involved two killer whales and an unfortunate minke whale. Soon after we left our mooring one morning, we encountered a bull and a cow orca, and we watched and photographed them for a while, trying to get the perfect shot of the male with his large, majestic dorsal fin. Then, we realized the horrific scene playing out in front of us.
The killer whales slowly maimed, tortured, and ate a minke whale while we watched.
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Minke Whale Trying to Escape
They first bit off the whale’s tail, probably so it couldn’t escape. The poor minke continued to struggle to swim while the orcas followed it, ripping pieces out of it as the whale slowly died. I reminded myself that killer whales are the top predators in the ocean, and they kill and eat everything from whales and sharks to squid. To us, though, their actions seemed cruel. Why didn’t they kill the minke and put it out of its misery?
Later, when I thought about the incident, I wondered if the killer whales left the minke alive so it wouldn’t sink, and they could more easily consume it at the surface. Perhaps their actions were practical and not cruel, but the orcas appeared to torture the minke while they ate it. The large bull once put his mouth around the minke’s head and then spit it out. To those of us watching the saga, it seemed the whales enjoyed taunting their prey and reveled in watching it suffer. We were possibly guilty of giving the whales human emotions, though. Unfortunately, we will never know their motivations.
When the minke swam toward our boat, we left before we became players in the drama. We didn’t need to stay to know how the story ended.
We are excited about the rest of our season. We have the perfect mix of new and returning guests. I’ll list all our adventures in our summer newsletter.
I have one more bit of news. Kodiak Island Wildlife, written by me and full of Mike’s photos, is now available. You can find it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, other online booksellers, and various stores in Kodiak. You can also order it directly from me.
Robin
Robinbarefield76@gmail.com