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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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  • The LeConte Inlet and Glacier were only a day's paddle from Petersburg so it was a good day out for me whenever I was living in the town. The glacier is the southernmost tide-water glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. I always enjoyed the challenge of trying to navigate my way through the congested ice floes, and then trying to photograph the seals without disturbing them, which most of the time I was able to do because of the stealth that a kayak provides. Being in a kayak also enabled me to get very close and low to icebergs so that I could take close-ups of the amazing icebergs sculpted into infinite shapes and forms, and luminescent with ethereal shades of blue and green. I always used the Indian method of anchoring with a rock tied to an anchor line resting on the bow, and then an additional longer bow line with the last half metre wrapped around the rock, so that when I pushed the kayak out and yanked on the long bow line the rock and anchor line were dislodged and fell into the water.
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  • It was always important to know where the safest anchorages were because the weather conditions could deteriorate very quickly. Some weren't secure enough, and I spent many a sleepless night making sure that the anchor was still secure and that Avalon was being dragged onto the rocks.
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  • The Brothers was one of my favourite and safest anchorages, with an entrance on either side, and a good beach near the anchorage for landing the dinghy or kayak. The intertidal life was amazing, and there was a special bonus of a rhubarb patch on one of the islands where there used to be a home.
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  • This is the entrance on the West side that faced Admiralty Island. To the right of the photo you can see the distinctive outline of the hills that creates "the Sleeping Giant", as everybody called it. Later on when I was just kayaking, I still liked to stop here to camp because there was a very good place to camp near where I took this photo from. In the opposite direction behind this beach was a small island that was used as a haul-out by Steller sea lions. Whenever they were there you could constantly hear their rumbling groaning and roaring. There is also a lot of seal and seabird activity around the island, and particularly around the kelp beds. One of the regular seabirds there are pigeon guillemots (Cepphus columba), with their distinctive high-piched squeaking. Humpback whales also frequently feed in the nutrient-rich waters around the island, as a result of the strong upwelling created by strong currents colliding. I had my first close encounter with humpback whales lunge-feeding right next to the rocky shoreline of one of the islands.
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  • Pybus Bay was one of my favourite beautiful places in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Admiralty Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska. It is 145 km (90 mi) long and 56 km (35 mi) wide with an area of 4,264.1 km² (1,646.4 sq mi), making it the seventh largest island in the United States. It is one of the ABC islands of Alaska: Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof. The island is nearly cut in two by Seymour Canal; to its east is the long, narrow Glass Peninsula. Most of Admiralty Island — more than 955,000 acres (3,860 km²) is occupied by the Admiralty Island National Monument - a federally protected wilderness area administered by the Tongass National Forest. The Kootznoowoo Wilderness encompasses vast stands of old growth temperate rainforest. These forests provide some of the best habitat available to species such as brown bears, bald eagles, and Sitka black-tailed deer.
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  • I made several trips to the amazing Glacier Bay National Park, in Avalon and just with my kayak.
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  • They obviously viewed me as a playmate or someone to tease and as soon as they saw me they started their pranks like this one darting towards me at high speed and then veering away as soon as I flinched. Their most annoying and clever prank was to keep picking up the anchor stone that my kayak was secured to on the ledge, swim out to deeper water and drop it so that my kayak would start drifting away and I had to keep swimming after it. I don’t know how they figured out how to do that; maybe it was something that they had already learnt to do from other kayakers, but they certainly appeared to relish my immediate reaction every time they did it. Eventually I had to wedge the rock firmly into a crack in the ledge to stop their merry prank.
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  • This was taken just off the entrance to Pleasant Harbour where I either used to anchor my boat or camp on the little islet at the entrance that is on the right of this photo. This was my regular base in my early years with the whales in Southeast Alaska. It was always a thrill to emerge from the beautiful cosy little safe anchorage in the morning and be greeted by volleys of whale blows illuminated by the rising sun against the shaded Glass Peninsula.
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  • Seymour Canal, which almost bisects Admiralty Island was one of my regular boating and kayaking haunts in my early years in Southeast Alaska. I always used to anchor Avalon in a beautiful little anchorage called Pleasant Bay, on the east side of Seymour Canal, but this camp was on the opposite side on the Glass Peninsula. This is where I was camped when I had one of my most amazing experiences when I witnessed a pod of orcas killing a big bull Steller's sea lion and attacking humpback whales in the middle of Seymour Canal.
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  • What an auspicious start to my trip! I had already made one false start leaving too late in the day and having to head back to the relative shelter of Tamatave. The next day I paddled 20 miles along the completely featureless coastline, and all I saw was a continuous, steep beach, with the big swells of the Indian Ocean crashing down onto it. I couldn’t see any ideal places for making a safe landing so I had to just go for it, come what may. I monitored the sequence of waves and made a dash for it at what seemed the safest point. I managed to get through the surf but as soon as I hit the beach and jumped out of the kayak the next wave broke into the cockpit and the powerful undertow started to drag my heavy flooded kayak back out to sea. The alarm bells were already clanging away inside my head, along with the thought, “Here’s another fine mess I’ve got myself into!”<br />
I instinctively started grabbing bags out of the kayak and hurling them up onto the beach while either my feet or knees were desperately anchoring into the abrasive shingle, but I was still being dragged around mercilessly by my unruly kayak. I looked down along the endless beach and saw two diminutive figures so I started hollering for help. As they got nearer my heart sank because I could see that it was a young girl with a child. They could only grab my things that were floating away in the relentless surf but then miraculously a strong young man appeared on the scene, and jumped into the sea to help me wrestle with my half-submerged kayak. The kayak was a dead weight in the water so I decided to start dismantling the cockpit coaming so that some of the water could be drained from the cockpit. It worked, and after much heaving we managed to drag it up the beach away from the surf; we both collapsed on the shore, utterly exhausted and chilled by the cold water. I was eternally grateful for the providential arrival of that young man on that deserted stretch of coastline.
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