Alaska-Sitka 8/10/18

Disembarked after breakfast and caught the shuttle into town, about a ten-minute ride.  There was free WiFi at the Visitor’s Centre and at the adjacent Library.  The latter was recommended as being faster, so we walked over and took up a small table in the reading room.

View from the delightful library at Sitka

The library is magnificent for a town of only a few thousand.  Recently refurbished, it boasted a good selection of books, DVDs and periodicals.  Given the high cost of subscriptions and shipping up here, it is no doubt a boon to Sitka citizens.  It also boasts large picture windows with lovely views of the bay and mountains.

After checking email, etc., we boarded our bus at the nearby Visitor’s Centre for the day’s tour.  First stop, the sylvan raptor center where we were charmed by 20 Bald Eagles in various stages of rehabilitation from injuries.  They were housed in an enclosure that was large enough for them to get back to flying while still exposed to the elements and as natural as possible.  Human contact was minimized to avoid imprinting.  When recovered, they are tagged and released into the wild.  That was followed by a lecture accompanied by the center’s ambassador eagle Tesla.  Tesla is blind in one eye and has suffered some neurological damage which hampers his flying ability enough to render him ineligible for release.  Instead, he and his handler travel to schools and teach people about raptors and their important role in Nature.  Other raptors were also present, in outdoor enclosures among the towering Sitka Spruces.  A salmon stream ran through the woods below, but a sign warned that this was Brown Bear habitat, so we skipped a closer inspection.

Flight rehab center 

Then we visited a bear sanctuary where several Alaskan Brown bears and some Black bears were recovering from injuries and some orphaned cubs were being raised before being returned to the wild.  The bears looked healthy and were kept in large, natural-seeming enclosures with running water and lots of food, but I always hate seeing wild animals in pens, no matter how large.

Alaskan Brown Bear, Sitka Bear Haven

That was followed by a visit to a Salmon hatchery and research centre.  Our guide, a young lady who worked with her father on his fishing boat, also guided tours around the hatchery and was off to University  in the Fall to study Marine Biology.  She was of course very knowledgeable and enthusiastic.   The hatchery harvests Salmon eggs, raises the hatchlings until they are large enough to be released in the ocean, then turns them loose.  Each year, the salmon that have survived the five years since their release, return to the hatchery seeking the stream that they were hatched in.  After running the gauntlet of fishing boats waiting offshore, some 2% make it through and have their eggs harvested and fertilized, to begin the cycle anew.   Seemed cruel to me to trick them this way, on the other hand, fishing is a crucial part of the local economy and if we don’t replace the stock we consume, there will eventually be no more fish.

Bald Eagle recovering at the rehab center

Back to the ship for a lovely supper and the evening’s entertainment in the Main Theatre.

Leaving Sitka