Scenic Eclipse
28 Scenic°
Discover
Wildlife of North and Central America A
C
B
Observe polar bears on the Canadian Arctic sea ice from your private verandah. Listen to the blow of humpback and gray whales as your Discovery Guide steers your Zodiac along Alaska’s Inside Passage. Paddleboard off Monterey, California to view sea otters, or kayak amidst Central America’s rainforests to spot vivid macaws and chattering monkeys. The face-to-face wildlife encounters will enthrall on either a North or Central American voyage. North American Arctic Alaska to British Columbia Unlocking the Northwest Passage will take you deep into the kingdom of the ‘ice bear’, as you traverse the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the north coast of Alaska. Besides polar bears and cubs, there are harp and ribbon seals resting on sea ice and shore. Prince Leopold Island is just one of several towering cliffs where sea birds in their hundreds of thousands nest. These include black-legged kittiwakes, thick-billed murres, glaucous gulls, Arctic terns northern fulmars’ and more. Nearby, arctic fox can often be seen scavenging for fallen eggs or chicks. On tundra walks, watch for glimpses of wolves, herds of caribou, shaggy musk ox families and burrowing lemmings. In the sea, look for tall-finned orcas, the blunt visage of bowhead whales, ghostly white belugas and if very fortunate, the fantastic narwhal, ‘unicorn of the Arctic’.
On Adventures through the Inside Passage, tundra gives way to coniferous forest and ice-clad mountains reach the sea. Train your in-suite binoculars on their flanks to find mountain goats, Dall sheep, moose and perhaps grizzly bears. Remote St Paul Island in the Bering Sea is a key nesting area for millions of migrating seabirds and a breeding ground for 500,000 northern fur seals. In the protected waterways from the Gulf of Alaska to Vancouver, British Columbia, see migrating humpback and gray whales, orcas, otters and Steller sea lions. While bald eagles patrol overhead, watch grizzly and black bears fish for salmon on spawning journeys upstream.
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