College Fjord

The pilot ship.

The view of the glaciers up on the mountain as we entered the sound to Whittier.

The huge Harvard glacier at the end of the fjord.

The outer promenade deck in the rain on the last night.

Enjoying the sights and sounds at the stern.

Saturday, August 12^th.

Woke up to a ‘rough as guts’ sea, winds of 44 mph and driving rain, and 14 degrees centigrade – lovely! The ship is running before the waves at 19 knots or 21 mph and it is swaying with the waves, not as bad as the Galapagos where I was tossed around my room; but it did make showering interesting. It would have been much rougher if we were heading into the waves. We are out in the open Pacific, no longer protected by coastal islands, heading towards our final destination, Whittier. This morning I watched two presentations in the World Stage theatre. The first was called ‘A City At Sea’, which gave a behind the scenes peak at the logistics of running a cruise ship, from the construction of the ship, mechanical power, electrical power, manpower, water supply issues, waste management, laundry and tailoring, entertainment, environmental concerns, ordering food and feeding almost 3000 people… Without going into all the details a few things piqued my interest. First water usage. All the drinking water used on the ship is created on board using the desalination process of evaporation with the heat being generated by the engines of the ship. The heat from the ‘exhaust’ of the ship is used to heat shower and laundry water. The average person flushes the toilet seven times a day. The average toilet in a home uses 6 litres of water to flush. The vacuum toilets on the ship use 1 litre. If the 2800 people on board flush 7 times each, do the math: 2800x7x1 as opposed to 2800x7x6; that means the ship uses about 98000 litres less that the same number of toilets in a hotel. The ship loads about 100 skids of food on board and usually only has about 2 skids left at the end. The makeup of the guest list is analyzed for cultural preferences in order to purchase the types of food and drink that they would be expected to eat and drink. The ship has its own bakery, and all breads and deserts are made on board. There are 140 cooks on board, with numerous different galleys and dozens of refrigerators and freezers. Enough! Needless to say, it is a mammoth undertaking to run a cruise ship seamlessly so that the passengers are well fed, safe and have a great vacation. The second presentation was put on by the on-board naturalist who tried to answer a question that she is frequently asked: why is there so much life at the poles where the water is so cold? She explained it by biogeochemistry, that is biology (life), geology (nutrients) and chemistry (daylight or energy). This region is blessed with long hours of light during the summer; tons of land-based nutrients ground up by the advancing glaciers and dumped into the sea, and cold water holds much more oxygen in it than warm water. All of which explains why the phytoplankton thrive here on the nutrients and sunlight and then the zooplankton (krill) thrive on that in such huge numbers that they feed all the large sea creatures from seals to whales. The total weight of krill on the planet is considerably more than the biomass of the total human population. Then there are the apex predators: the orca in the sea, the grizzly bear on land the bald eagle in the air. The one thing she didn’t explain is how all of these creatures exist in this extremely cold water when we cannot. Of course the seals, dolphins and whales do it with blubber but what about the small shrimp, krill, etc. They obviously have a much better tolerance for cold than we do. I watched a speed boat approach our ship and wondered what it was doing. Turned out to be the 'pilot' ship. Everytime a large ship comes into a port, a pilot has to board and help the captain navigate into the harbour. I hung out for the afternoon as it was rainy and foggy, but when we got to College it lifted just enough that we could see the multiple glaciers in this fjord. A fjord, a Norwegian word, is a deep valley that has been carved out by a glacier. As the ship sailed up the fjord we could see numerous glaciers until we reached the end where we were confronted by the massive Harvard glacier. The captain kept us there and opened the forward decks so we could all get a good view even though it was raining pretty heavily. After that I had dinner and then went back to the stateroom to pack up my suitcase and put it out in the hall.. My big bag will be collected overnight and delivered to my next hotel in Anchorage. That got me thinking of another logistical nightmare… getting all the bags off the ship and delivered to the right tour and taken to the right hotel or airport… then I went out and had a beer walking around the promenade deck saying goodbye to both the ship and the sea… I got back to the room by 11 and went to bed shortly afterwards.