Petersburg to Thomas Bay

We post every few days so note that this one is from Thursday.

 

We left Petersburg at 4:30 AM to beat the wind in Frederick Sound and beyond. Just opposite the Petersburg harbour we had a glimpse of this glacier.

  

 

The entrance to Thomas Bay

We came into Thomas Bay early enough to go to the far end to get a peek at a glacier. Only bits of the glacier were visible but we were excited to see our very first 'iceberg', a rather unimpressive lump of rotten ice.

 

We'll wait until we find a more substantial iceberg before harvesting the traditional ice for cocktails.

 

At the other end of Thomas Bay there were several salmon seiners at work so we stopped to watch. 

 

In this picture you can see the seine skiff that is used to control one end of the net.

 

The net is stretched out perpendicular to the shoreline when first set. The net is allowed to sit for twenty minutes of so until (hopefully) a school of salmon have come along. Then the net is circled, the bottom edge is 'pursed' and the net is drawn to the boat to concentrate the catch. You can see here that they have 'pursed' the bottom edge of the seine and are drawing it gradually to the boat. 

 

That was a lot of work for relatively few salmon. It's hard to tell the species but I am pretty sure they are chum salmon. When I zoom way in I can see dark vertical bars along their sides and prominent hooked jaws.

 

Oblio was interested too.

 

 

After we dropped the hook in Ruth Cove we had G&T on the roof. Out of respect for our host country, accepted protocol is to fly the US courtesy flag amidship, our Canadian flag is flying further back.