I woke up with the sun this morning and set out to capture some final images of Cordova before joining Jeanine for breakfast. We then made a return visit to Hartney Bay for our first bear sighting and all this before arriving at the ferry terminal by 6:30am.

The three hour transit to Valdez started with great weather but degraded into a steady rain by the time we reached our destination. We arrived just in time to gather a box lunch in preparation for a 6 hour guided kayaking tour of the Shoup Glacier and adjacent Kittiwake rookery.

Our kayaks and group of six paddlers were taxied by small boat from the port of Valdez to the top of Shoup Bay where we off loaded onto a small beach and then put in for our day on the water. In total we were four kayaks (3 doubles and a single for our guide, Darcy). An all day slow steady rain was the price of entry for a front row seat to a Kittiwake rookery of several thousand birds. We were able to glide within feet of the nesting birds without disturbing them in the least. The presence of an opportunistic Bald Eagle in search of a baby Kittiwake snack, however, would launch the entire colony into a defensive mobbing behavior which is captured in the video below.

Kittiwakes are of two types, black-legged (this colony) and red-legged. They are the only gull species that are exclusively cliff-nesting. We enjoyed watching couples working together constructing and tending to their nests. Several newborns were also present. Shoup Bay has the fastest growing Kittiwake rookery in Prince William Sound with more than 20,000 birds and 6,000 nests. We continued to paddle taking us from the tidal basin containing the rookery to the one into which the Shoup Glacier terminates.

The glacier is simply beautiful, both in color and form. Two rivers carry melt water from beneath the glacier into the bay and have formed massive tunnels. Calving can occur at any moment (except while recording video in anticipation of the event). A sharp cracking noise is followed by a thunderous crash as the ice hits the water. We put ashore twice during the day, once to eat lunch and the second to walk up to and investigate the glacier. We timed our departure to catch the falling tide and had an exciting high speed white water exit as we moved from the inner to outer tidal basin where we rendezvoused with our water taxi.