Alaska SeaLife Center: Not Seward's Folly
Written: Jul 18 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent talks, not crowded
Cons: Expensive. No sea otters.
The Bottom Line: Very good educational add-on to your boat cruises to Kenai Fjords National Park.
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| realtraveller's Full Review: Alaska SeaLife Center |
Unless you are sport fishing for salmon or halibut, the reason you're going to Seward, Alaska is to see the wildlife. The best way to do that is to take one of the cruises out on Resurrection Bay and to Kenai Fjords National Park. On those cruises you'll see sea lions, harbor seals, puffins, sea otters, whales and eagles. But you'll see them from a certain distance using binoculars. So if you have time in Seward and want to see the animals close up and have time to watch them for hours, head to the Alaska SeaLife Center in downtown Seward.
Set on the edge of Resurrection Bay at the end of Seward's main street, this facility is now 10 years old. It was built with some of the millions Exxon paid as reparations for the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 as a center for studying the seas off Alaska with an emphasis on conserving Alaska's fisheries and maintaining the health of the sea.
Price
The other reviewers complained about the price. Well, it's gone up since they posted. The price for adults is $20. For students 12-17 it's $15. There's no discount for seniors, but AARP and AAA members get a 10% discount. Alaska residents are free on the 10th day of each month this year as a 10th year anniversary special.
But the really ridiculous prices are for the so-called Encounters. These are small specialized semi-private tours to get up close and personal with puffins or the octopus. For 60 minutes of seeing an octopus up close with a guide, the cost was $79 for adults and $59 for students.
This is not a destination-type aquarium like the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California or even the smaller Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. So for what it is, the price is high. Even the locals thought so.
What to See
The highlights of the Alaska SeaLife Center are the three large habitats of the Rocky Coast Gallery. We literally spent hours watching the puffins. We saw plenty of puffins out on the bay, but puffins are small and it was really a delight to see them so close. The habitat is built to look like the rocky cliffs of Resurrection Bay, so much so that the puffins, kittiwakes and other sea birds have built nests in this enclosure. The enclosure is two-storied so that the visitor can see the diving of the puffins underwater for fish and really appreciate how fish-like they are. Puffins have solid bones so that they are heavier for diving. The downside of this is that they are not great fliers.
The Seabird Habitat is such a great place to see puffins, kittiwakes, eider ducks and oyster catchers that the National Geographic Channel was there the day we visited filming puffins for a cable TV show to be on air in the spring. (And I thought they spent months in the wilderness getting those incredible shots, ha).
I also enjoyed seeing the Stellar sea lions and to a lesser extent the harbor seals. Harbor seals are rather ubiquitous, after all.
The other highlights of this aquarium are the explanatory exhibits on salmon, which I hadn't encountered at other aquariums, and the really excellent talks that are given at various times during the day.
We took in the talk on the glaciers of the Kenai, given by a National Park ranger. He had a slide show showing how the glaciers are receding in Alaska and how quickly. But some Alaska glaciers are advancing and science does not know why some are advancing and others are receding. The docent who gave a talk on the seals was also very interesting. The talk was about the research that is being done on fertility in seals. The facility has four adolescent female seals. Two are being fed a lower fat diet and two are being fed a higher fat diet. The thinking is that estrogen levels may be affected. Scientists are concerned that fertility is down in seals and are hypothesizing that the changes in fish numbers favoring lower fat fish in the bay may mean that the seals aren't ovulating as much as they did when the type of fish available were higher in fat. Interesting stuff.
Large tanks outside were used for studying the effects of cameras and other tracking equipment on the backs of sea lions to make sure that the animals were not adversely affected by attempts to study and film their behavior.
While the Monterey Aquarium and the Long Beach aquarium have docents, they tend to be crowded. Small, hard to get to Seward, Alaska is not crowded. I like to ask questions and I was able to corner a docent for longer conversations about the seals and the studies going on at this center. Workers took the puffins out and I got to see them really up close.
There is also a live video feed out to the Chiswell Islands to view Stellar sea lions in their native habitat. This live feed is also available from your computer, if you're interested.
Really, the only animal I really would have liked to see up close were sea otters, which the Alaska SeaLife Center didn't have on display.
This center can be seen superficially in an hour or you could spend all day there. Get your hand stamped and head across the street to Christos for lunch or I'm told the seafood chowder at the center's Haul Out Cafe is good. There's plenty of parking and the deck and walkways around the center are great places to see the spectacular mountain scenery of Resurrection Bay. Seward really has one of the most scenic settings for a town anywhere in the world.
The Alaska SeaLife Center is open 9am to 7pm.
Recommended:
Yes
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