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We set off today for Halo Bay - the sea was flat calm making it really easy to see the rafts of sea otters bobbing on the surface. I saw some splashes which as we watched turned out to be small Dahl's Porpoises chasing fish.
Next we stopped off at Fossil beach to look, not unsurprisingly, for fossils - the rocks were soft from volcanic ash and other sediments - as it peeled off you often found fossilised leaves and occasional insects. Indeed there was a massive eruption in 1912 which topped all the surrounding mountains in ash leaving them with a distinctive grey outline. Felix found some but I followed the bear prints and photographed the plants growing out of the rocks along with the water trickles rolling down and calcifying on the face.
Back in the boat we drove onward to Halo Bay - at its wide entrance there were rocks which were home to sea birds - we saw glaucous gulls, black legged kittiwake and one lone horned puffin,(today's photo) but on the water we saw a group of tufted puffins, surf scoters and pigeon gullimots.
We then headed to the shore to see if we could walk to the river where we surmised that the Bears were gathering - no luck as we couldn't cross the river so we returned to the boat. We motored up the coast passing several planes parked on the beach, we watched as they left one by one using the beach as their run way. We couldn't sadly use this area for anchorage as it was too shallow so we couldn't join their search for the bears.
We relocated to the other end of the beach - had lunch - then tried again going along the very edge of the bay - again we were thwarted we couldn't get across the river it was running too fast with meltwater off the glacier and the meadows filled with bears in May were now devoid of bears.
So back to the boat, we pulled up the anchor and headed back.
We ventured into Kukak bay - and searched for bears - nil - until we reached the marshy area where we found one large male eating the grasses.......we have seen bears here everyday no doubt attracted by the nutritious sedges.
Finally we ventured back to camp having had a nearly bear less day - but that's nature.
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