Monday | May 16th

To the town of Klawok for a special tour with native Tlingit to view not only their totem pole park, but where they carve the new ones, five of which will be carried by the townspeople and erected later this summer. We walk a couple of miles to the center where beautifully carved and painted wolves and bears and seals adorned the huge cedar logs.

Much of the work is to duplicate the old totems that are stored on an empty lot. We felt privileged to have such an intimate look at life here on Prince of Wales Island. Memorial and mortuary poles from Tuxekan village were present and an amazing 12-foot long killer whale on top of a brown bear was the highlight of the totem park.

I have a chance to collect a few plants from a friendly home owner, mainly mosses and sapling trees growing out of the side of the driveway and I put them in a temperate rainforest display on the back of the ship. Amazingly, while underway later in the week, an American Dipper flies out from an unmanned island and lands on my display. I’ve seen a Rufous Hummingbird land and a couple of species of seabirds, but never a river dependent avian species like the water ouzel or dipper! Wish I had my camera at that moment!

Grab a few guest passengers and we do a plankton tow at the end of the dock and display them under the 20x and 40x power stereoscopes I have onboard the vessel. Lots of Nauplius or barnacle larvae and tens of thousands of phytoplankters or plant plankton.

 

 

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