18 Days in Alaska Vlog: Journeying down Alaska’s Inside Passage from Nome to Vancouver for Wildlife

I'm about to embark on an 18-day expedition cruise through Alaska in order to find wildlife. I'll be filming it, learning more about it and bringing you with me every step of the way. My trip started in Nome and over the 18 days will journey south ending up in Vancouver. Today we're heading out to Semple Island which is the largest of the Pribilof Islands here in Alaska. It's home to over 300 different species of migrating birds as well as over half the world's population of northern fur seals. It feels a little bit sketchy. I'm literally at the edge of a cliff now about to perch over the edge to try and get a shot of these puffins so we will see how it goes. So down here we've got the horned and the tufted puffins which are two new species for me and they're right on the edge of a cliff so it's quite hard to get a good shot but they're really cool to see. I'm sat filming a colony of northern fur seals. There's over half the world's population found on these islands here so it's literally like teeming with seals. There's big males getting ready to breed again, there's females and there's loads of tiny pups as well and it's almost like overwhelming because there's so much action all around it's kind of hard to know where to narrow down and where to get the shot. Today we're in Dutch Harbour and the second that we stepped off the boat we've been surrounded by bald eagles which has been absolutely incredible. There's literally a bald eagle right up there on top of the ship as we speak. Bald eagle on the boat in front of us and we've just spent the last nearly two hours now waiting in the hope that he's going to take off and fly. They are one of the largest eagles you can find in this area. They have a wingspan of about seven and a half feet so they're absolutely massive. They're known for that white head of birds but that definitive white plumage actually takes about six years to fully develop in this species but it's so cool to have this behind. A really really close encounter with a wild eagle. We could have easily spent the whole day there but we decided to get off and explore the island. We did see some sea otters quite far away but enough to get a couple of shots and other than that it's been quite quiet wildlife wise. We haven't seen the sea lions but it's just been so special and a good day to be off the boat. Currently we're on day six of the trip but only our second day off of the ship so every day where we can get off so far has been like our favourite days because for wildlife it's just like that's the opportunity to get out with our cameras and the next week ahead of us is all like really exciting wildlife days so I think the trip will pick up from here and just be full of animals and nature and exactly the kind of stuff that we love to do. One of my favourite elements about being on the ship was the science team that were working there who were invested in on the ground research. Today we headed out to sea on one of the zodiac boats and we took part in one of the citizen science projects for the team of scientists on board the ship. We focus on collecting phytoplankton and then tomorrow we're going to analyse that phytoplankton under the microscope to see what species they had there and what that tells us about the current environment in this part of Alaska. Phytoplankton are really important because they form the base of the food chain and whilst I've been out in Alaska I've been able to witness that firsthand. So the salmon that we see here when they're young they feed on the phytoplankton and as they get older they feed on fish which feed on the phytoplankton and then the big predators like the bears and the eagles eat the salmon and then they distribute those nutrients through the ecosystem. When they poo in the forest or regurgitate their food in the forest those nutrients get recycled by the trees and form the beautiful temperate rainforests that we see here in Alaska. We have just spotted a bear up ahead of us on the shoreline so we're making a beeline straight towards him and hopefully he will wait around and we'll be able to get a shot of him. We just had the most incredible first sighting of a bear probably a young male about three years old and it was so special to see but now we're going to keep searching and hoping to get a bit closer up shots. There was this big male bear probably the biggest one we've seen with this like beautiful colouration across his back and he came right down to the water and was feeding off one of the salmon at the water's edge so that was like the best encounter we had of the day. We're currently on Kodiak Island and we've hopped in the taxi in search of the bears that live here we're heading to a spot called Woman's Bay where we're hoping to get good sighting so we will see if we're in luck. As we drove past we saw a mum and two cubs out by the water so we literally jumped straight out the taxi and we had the most incredible encounter with this bear family for about half an hour and right at the end they came like up onto the road and made a crossing over the road so it was just it was incredible. I literally don't think it could have been any better I got the most incredible shots of them in the water fishing and I just feel I just feel so lucky to have been able to have such a close encounter with them it was so so special. We've just arrived in Icy Bay and it's pretty misty out at sea today but we're hoping to take out the zodiacs and go and see one of the glaciers here. This is probably the coldest it's been on our trip and we're actually surrounded by ice already we've got these like floating mini icebergs around the ship which is pretty cool to see it's not something I've ever seen before. Honestly this is actual madness it's just gone midnight here and I'm still wide awake because the boat is moving so much tonight like it's constantly shaking and juddering. I'm actually feeling all right I took a tablet quite early tonight because two nights ago I was really ill like being sick for over an hour and then I had to get the nurse to come in and he gave me an injection in my butt cheek stopped me being so sick but this is moving way more like you know when you're going to sleep and it feels like you're falling and then you wake yourself up because you like panic that's what it feels like but we're like we actually go up and then we actually fall so it's so hard to fall asleep because you're like constantly in like panic mode because it's moving so much it's crazy I feel like I wanted to document this to show the reality of like I didn't want it to all be like happy happy happy sunshine sunshine and like almost like a reality check or a reminder that it has actually been tough and being at sea for what will be 18 days I've done 13 days so far is a long time and like it's not every day hasn't been a good day not everything's been easy not everything's gone to plan and like this is kind of like the other side to it like yes we've had these epic encounters with bears but then you have a night where you're in a roller coaster bed and you can't sleep or you're feeling so sick that a doctor comes in and gives you an injection in your bum that's the reality days on board the ship where we couldn't get off and go exploring were quite quiet and there wasn't really a lot to see so I kind of just made the most of what was on board the ship spending a lot of time in the gym training and trying to keep my body moving when we couldn't otherwise be active I'm so happy to be in this forest today and be on land for a few hours the past couple of days on the ship have been pretty rough I had one really sick night where I think I just took the seasickness tablet a bit late and then I was just being sick for well over an hour it got to the point where I had to have one of the nurses come up into my room to give me an injection literally in my butt cheek which was not fun but it helped and then the next day I just spent the whole day sleeping it off and then last night was really rough as well but I actually felt okay but literally the whole beds were like rocking and shaking so it just made it really difficult to sleep so today we actually cancelled one of the wildlife trips we had booked on we had booked onto this boat trip to see the sea otters and the whales but it was just like we just needed some time on land to reconnect with the earth and to be in the forest and have a little break from sea life I think so hopefully by the time we get back on the ship later tonight be feeling a lot better and then ready to go tomorrow for our whale watching tour there's literally thousands of salmon around us right now this is literally bear paradise they've come upstream from the oceans to breed to spawn but because it's the end of their life cycle lots of them are already starting to die so there's this like really strong pungent smell of dying fish basically so it's kind of gross but also pretty epic and the bears obviously love it as well today I'm about to head out on a whale watching tour in Wrangell in search of the humpback whales and hopefully some orca as well we've just been out whale watching for the past two and a half hours now and we're just having a little break on land before heading back out again but we had the most incredible morning we were literally surrounded by humpback whales and I got to see new behavior which I've never seen before I have studied it in university but never seen before with my own eyes and we saw them lunge feeding and bubble netting which was just incredible to see them working together like that to catch fish and the first couple of times we actually missed it but then we started to realize that the birds were going to indicate where they are about to do it the birds would kind of pick up in action and all move together towards a spot and then we could focus our cameras there and wait for the humpbacks to come up and get the shot but it was just so special to see one of the times that happened literally right on the front of the boat way too close for a camera to even capture but being able to see that and be there in that moment was just so special so hopefully we'll get more this afternoon unfortunately we didn't get any more sightings that day but after the lucky morning we had it was still one of the most special days of the trip the last few days of the trip we were based on the ship traveling back to Vancouver where the journey would end because we have had more time on the ship than I thought we would I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to be out in nature to be finding animals filming animals so I feel like I've just scratched the surface of what Alaska has to offer in terms of the wildlife here which means I'll definitely have to come back another time and because the snippets of it that I did get I just wish I had more of that so it'd be so nice to be able to come back and spend more time in all of these amazing places days hours just focusing solely on filming the wildlife here. A big thank you to Bibby as well for joining me in Alaska and helping me to film this video. I hope you all enjoyed it if you did please do hit that like and subscribe button and I'll see you all again very soon.