23 Aug 2017

SOE: Exploring the Spectacular Whale Bone Alley

The plan was audacious, in a gentle sort of way. We’d be woken up at 5.30 am should there be any whales to see, and hop into the Zodiacs before breakfast. While we slept, Captain directed the ship from Preobrezhniya Bay to the north coast of Yttegran Island, then into the waters along the island’s west coast. Our expedition leader Howard was up very early, searching for the tell-tale blows. He later said that in the early morning light, it seemed that there were no whales at all.

Then there was one blow, then two, three, five, 10! We loaded into the boats and began motoring toward the whales. Or rather, to a spot near the whales, where we began to drift. Soon there were humpback blows, sounding like de-tuned trombones competing with the sound of kittiwakes and shearwaters quarrelling over food, and all around whale exhalations creating puff-balls of mist above the sea.

We had landed ourselves the mother load of whale watching. It mattered not which Zodiac you were in, each boat was having its own 360-degree, head-spinning experience. Sunlight glinted off sea-glazed tail flukes as they marked the next dive. Some whales twinned up for choreographed dives. Some just swam lazily by, often on both sides of us at once. A couple of grey whales took the stage, their beautifully mottled backs a contrast to that of the latex-black humpbacks. Conversation that had initially (and understandably) begun the initial offering with whale experiences in other parts of the world suddenly stopped. The sheer number of whales around us made sure of that. There was no direction we could focus on without seeing at least 10 blows.

After two hours it was time to return to the ship, but then Sarah radioed that a whale was breaching to the south. As drivers began heading in that direction, the whale began coming toward us. Closer and closer it came, breaching, then laying on its back and flapping its elegantly long pectoral fins as if it was attempting a back stroke. And then it would breach again. And again. It was crazy. We finally could no longer put off returning to the ship, and even as we turned north, another whale began breaching and tail slapping, then another. In the end our naturalists estimated more than 55 whales, all humpbacks except for two gray whales.

After breakfast we went ashore at Whale Bone Alley. We landed amidst the remains of an incredible avenue of vertical jawbones from bowhead whales. Their exact age and meaning remain a mystery, explanations ranging from what was once a Chukchi Delphi, to practical markers for meat caches in the winter snows, to drying racks for walrus-skin boats. Some followed Chris on a leg-stretcher up to the saddle, then the western high point; others joined Sarah in search of the elusive northern pika, while the rest of us ambled along the shoreline, discovering the massive skulls of bowhead whales, including one that was used as the roof of a rock-walled food cache.

After lunch we took Zodiacs up the shallow outlet of a small lagoon at Gil’mimyl, where we were greeted by Ivan, a reindeer herder and his son Alexander. To our delight, they invited us to their summer for some tea and traditional food. We tried some walrus, whale meat and skin, delicious locally-smoked trout and salmon, red caviar on fresh bread, flat bread, battered salmon and a salad from local herbs. Ivan gave a quick lesson on how to shave the hairs off a reindeer skin with a long draw knife to prepare the skin for other uses. Afterwards many of us made a beeline (stopped only by crow, blue and cloud berries) to the hot springs up the valley. Many of us hopped in, blissfully relaxing, gazing at cloud-wreathed summits, to the sound of the nearby salmon-filled stream beckoning us for a cooling dip. What a day!

© Grigory Tsidulko