Alaska Sea Life Center

With the weather dreary and more rain threatening, we decided on an indoor activity today. Another of our 2 for 1 deals was at the Alaska Sea Life Center. It was a good four hours of education and enjoyment. We managed to catch a few events – including the staff feeding their sea lion and baby walrus.

Approximately a month ago, an abandoned, newborn walrus was found off shore of Alaska. After leaving it to see if the mother would return, wildlife experts determined it was at risk and brought it to the center. It was underweight and malnourished – the suspicion is something happened to the mother. The Sea Life Center has an intensive care where they care for their sick so this baby walrus has been in the ICU since it arrived 4 weeks ago. It is certainly an intensive job – they have someone with the walrus 24×7 to try and mimic what the mother would do. There is lots of cuddling and touching. The baby has put on about 20 pounds now and weights over 140 pounds. Two days ago they moved it into a water tank so now the staff has to wear a dry suit and be in the tank with it. They have a plastic board they have for the walrus to rest on most of the time, but they are introducing it to the water for short periods to let it learn to swim! It feeds every 3 hours with a formula of Pedialyte and milk using a big bottle for animals. It consumes one and a half gallons a day! They said that walruses are on the no release list back to the wild so it will be with them probably for the next year while they look for a location in the rest of the States to locate it permanently.

A lot of the work that is done at the Sea Life Center is done in order to learn about the creatures and the sea and the effects that our environment is having on them and subsequently humans. It was a great place for kids of all ages and certainly adults were able to learn more about being better stewards of our oceans. They had a few interactive areas where people could touch some of the small sea life as well. They had a number of outdoor pens and tanks including ones for sea birds including puffins as well as seals and sea lions.

Later in the afternoon, the rain cleared and Joyce bought a fishing licence for the next 3 days and we headed down to the beach to try it out. No luck tonight but one fisherman had pity on us and gave us a nice red salmon he had caught! We’ll give it a try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow – fishing…..