Going to Berners Bay in spring is always a bit of a lottery—you never know what you might see there. Maybe nothing much, except some scenery. But if you hit it just right, things can get pretty interesting.
When the eulachon (a.k.a. hooligan) are in the bay, staging for their spawning migration up the rivers, there might be dozens upon dozens of sea lions, foraging cooperatively and rafting up to rest from their exertions. Harbor seals would be there too, in quantity, and humpback whales would be likely to cruise through. Orcas may arrive, in search of unwary sea lions or seals.
Once the hooligan are in the rivers, the action in the bay dies down. Tens of thousands of gulls and ten hundred eagles gather to gorge on these oil-rich, slow-swimming fish, which run a fearsome gauntlet of predators in the lower reaches of the rivers.
Springtime also brings shoals of herring, which often spawn in the bay. That draws lots of eagles, which line the shore and swoop down to snag a distracted spawner. Gulls feast on the eggs that coat the rockweed in the intertidal zone, and humpback whales come to fill their maws with fish.
One year, our annual kayak junket to Berners Bay happened when both hooligan and herring were bringing in hordes of predators, and the bay was a crazy place. We hardly knew where to cast our watchful gaze!
This year, 2011, was different again. The eulachon were up the rivers, attracting clouds of gulls, and only a few sea lions and seals remained in the bay. The herring had spawned recently, and their eggs glistened on the rockweed when the tide went out. The gulls were all busy with the hooligan in the rivers and ignored the herring eggs, and the mobs of eagles were notably absent.
Instead, we saw acres and acres of surf scoters—there must have been ten or twenty thousand of them. What a racket! They spent a lot of time apparently loafing and talking. Every so often, a group of them would head to the shore and nibble on herring eggs, sometimes pulling off chunks of seaweed too. I suspect they were also diving for mussels. Or they would suddenly all dash across the water with great splashing, for no apparent reason. When thousands of ducks do this all at once, it creates quite a ruckus.
Bonaparte’s gulls were diving after pink salmon fry that thronged the shallows and maybe also juvenile herring in the deeper water. Barrow’s goldeneyes in small squadrons swam along the rocky shore, gobbling up herring eggs. A kingfisher dove repeatedly and seemed to catch a salmon fry on almost every try. Three solitary black bears foraged on separate beaches.
A little walk in the woods produced three very dead and dried herring, perhaps dropped by some inept or unlucky eagle or gull. Another possibility, however, is that ravens had grabbed a fish as it tried to spawn in shallow water, or had stolen it from another bird, and stashed it in the trees. Years ago, when I was studying predators at the eulachon run, we noticed ‘rains’ of dead eulachon falling from the trees when the wind blew; they’d been stored up there by a gang of scavenging ravens.
Another stroll in the woods found us in a soggy little opening where lots of skunk cabbage grew. But instead of a cheery array of bright yellow, there were only stubs barely showing above the muck. Something had messily chawed them all off, right down to the mud line. The culprit left evidence of its passing: huge cloven hoof prints and occasional clusters of digested pellets about the size of the end of my thumb. Moose were introduced to the Berners Bay area some decades ago and they have found a nice smorgasbord there—we also noted well-browsed alder shrubs along the upper beach.
So, although we missed the show at the hooligan staging in the bay and the show at the spawning herring, we found plenty to see!
On the Trails in Juneau 