Sunday July 22 Valdez Lu Lu Belle boat trip

We went on a boat trip out of Valdez today on the Lu Lu Belle, which was quite a bit smaller tour boat than the one we took in Seward. Our thinking was that it might be a bit smaller and more personal than the much bigger Seward tour boat.

The captain of this boat was an older guy who was very knowledgeable about most things in the area. Right from the start, he began explaining some of the commercial fishing boats that were in the harbor and what it is that they do. Quite interesting, as we really never knew why there were many of the smaller fishing boats and just a few of the much larger. This trip really was more about the character of the area as opposed to just a nature trip as the one in Seward was. We saw one whale and that was it for the day. The captain said that he did not stop for sea lions and for the most part, he didn't. He had a thing about sea lions as they seem to compete with the local fishermen for the salmon.

As we went along Prince William Sound (where Valdez was located) we passed many, many commercial fishing boats. Apparently, commercial boats can't go out just anytime and anywhere. In just the last couple of days, the folks who govern these things, opened up this area for commercial salmon fishing. They call it an "opener". There were boats from all over Alaska and even Washington State, Oregon and California. We stopped at a couple of the smaller boats, who had their nets out and the captain explained how the process worked as they let the nets out and then gathered the nets in. There was always a smaller boat (about the size of a small speed boat), which was used to help let out the net and then gather it in. The bigger boats were the "buyers' who would off-load the smaller boats, when the small boats were full. Very interesting.

The big part of the trip was stopping at the Columbia Glacier. We spent about an hour there. He took the boat right into the ice that was falling off the glacier. The glacier was about 200 ft above the water and the water right in front of the glacier was 690 ft deep. That made the glacier almost 900 ft thick at that point. A big thing was being able to see parts of the glacier break off. This is called "calving". We saw a few of these events and they are quite amazing as they fall into the water.

Along the way there were also a few large oil tankers. Valdez has a huge oil terminal as it is the end of the Alaskan Oil Pipeline. Since the famous Exon Valdez oil spill, they seem to be over the top on safety with handling of the oil.