Alaska 2024 - Day 13 Valdez
21 August 2024
We had a smooth transit through the North Pacific, arriving in Valdez at 9:00 AM. The weather was overcast, but quite nice.
The port of Valdez is of course famous for the Exxon Valdez, a huge oil tanker which struck an undersea rock while transiting Prince William Sound after leaving the port of Valdez fully laden with its noxious cargo, which was soon covering much of the sea and shoreline. The port of Valdez was unaffected directly by the spill, but many changes were made to the security, safety, and response procedures for the port and for ships entering and leaving Valdez.
Almost as soon as we left the ship to check out the town, we saw a bald eagle perched on an antenna.
The town of Valdez is nestled around Valdez Harbor, a good sized marina with a lovely view of the surrounding mountains.
There was a sea otter that seemed right at home swimming on its back through the marina.
Looking back, across town from the harbor, a the Mineral Creek Waterfall flowed down through Mineral Creek Valley.
There was also a glacier visible from town. I think it was Worthington Glacier, but there are so many glaciers surrounding Valdez, I'm not 100% sure.
We saw a bunny in a parking lot. Apparently, someone let a few pet bunnies go some time ago and now they're everywhere.
There's a well appointed Visitor's Center with a lot of life-like taxidermy and loads of information about Valdez and things do do not far from the pier.
Galina tried to buy a nice necklace at the Visitor's Center, but it was a display only, with no sales person, and we were supposed to be able to purchase using an app on our phone. We tried for quite a while, but weren't able to make it work. We hurried back to the ship for a quick lunch before our Valdez City Bus Tour.
The highlight of the tour for us was definitely the stop at the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery. These are not farmed salmon. They are from salmon that were hatched at the Hatchery, raised to a certain size, then released into the wild so they could live out their normal salmon lives. They return to the Hatchery when they would normally spawn, swim back up the fish ladder and into the Hatchery. They are electrocuted, and harvested for eggs and sperm, and the cycle starts all over again.
It sounds kind of cruel, but at that point in their lives, they would normally have made an arduous swim back up a regular fresh water stream, where they would have died of natural causes. Who's to say electrocution is any more cruel?
There were many, many salmon waiting near the entrance to the Hatchery to meet their fate, and many very well fed sea lions at the all you can eat salmon buffet presented.
In nature, it's probably kind of rare that a creature gets to eat itself into a food coma, unless it's an apex predator with a big kill, or a sea lion in a sea of fish.
Soon, we were back on the bus and headed to town. We did have a quick stop at the welcome sign.
When we got back to the ship, I found out an old wooden part of the pier we were tied up to had broken and the bollard we were tied to fell into the ocean! The crew had to lower it to the bottom and cut the line.
Synthetic mooring lines are much stronger than old hemp lines and much lighter and easier to handle than steel, but there's something to be cautious of. Synthetic line snap back. The lines are kind of like rubber bands, and if they part while under tension, the release can cause serious injury or death to anyone in the way. That's why they had to lower it to the bottom, relieving the tension, then cut the line.
Also, without that mooring line, the crew had to keep the ship pushed to the pier with one of the bow thrusters.
I certainly don't fault the cruise line for any of this, and they handled the situation quietly and well. I'm sure the port of Valdez had plans to replace that part of the pier, as all the rest was made of steel and seemed to be in good repair.
We were underway at 6:00 and had more scenery to watch roll by as we headed back toward Seward, then home.
