Dry Bay
| Dry Bay | ||
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| Waters | Gulf of Alaska ( Pacific Ocean ) | |
| Land mass | North America | |
| Geographical location | 59 ° 9 ′ 41 ″ N , 138 ° 34 ′ 28 ″ W | |
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| width | 6 km | |
| depth | 8 kilometers | |
| Tributaries | Alsek River , Muddy Creek | |
The Dry Bay forms the estuary of the Alsek River in the southeast of the US state Alaska . It is fringed by impenetrable coastal rainforest and flanked by the largest extra-polar glacier area, the Elias chain and the Fairweather Range .
history
The name Dry Bay comes from the lagoon falling dry at low tide .
The bay was inhabited by Tlingit Indians , in whose language it is called "Gunanaxoo" . The first documentary mention was made by the explorer and captain James Cook , who named the bay "Beering's Bay" in 1778 , in the opinion that his role model Vitus Bering anchored here as early as 1741. Dry Bay was given its current name in 1869 by G. Davidson from the US Coast and Geodetic Survey.
The Dry Bay was a trading post between the küstenbewohnenden Tlingit and Athabascan from the upper Yukon Valley. In winter, dried fish, skins - especially seals and the booty from trapping , seal fat, dried algae and wild berries were brought over the frozen Alsek River and further on the Tatshenshini inland to the later Dalton Post . In the summer, the dugout canoes brought copper, marble, clothing and tools to the coast in return.
During the Little Ice Age , the Lowell Glacier and the Alsek River formed a glacial reservoir 200 km further north . Over the years, huge masses of water collected in the neoglacial Alsek Lake above the glacier, which after the glacier dam broke in 1725 and 1852, rushed into the Pacific as an all-engulfing wall of water and carried away most of the valley's inhabitants.
If the settlement was sparsely populated after the last flood disaster, it was finally abandoned in 1910. A newly built canned salmon factory competed with the local fishermen and established a boat connection to Yakutat , which also encouraged emigration. The Dry Bay was starting now, with a few loners populated, only in the salmon season.
Ecology and tourism
The lagoon is increasingly silting up as the Alsek River carries with it enormous amounts of glacial abrasion and is deposited here when the current subsides.
The coastline is populated by large colonies of seagulls , seals frolic in the bay and moose and grizzlies frolic on the banks . Salmon (king salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) , silver salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) , sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) , pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) and dog salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) ) spawn in the side streams .
The commercial fishing was decisive that the Dry Bay , actually located in Glacier Bay National Park, was spun off from this in 1980 and devalued to Glacier Bay National Preserve . Nevertheless, Dry Bay with the nearby Alsek Lake is considered the little sister of Glacier Bay by individual travelers , because it offers a similar experience of nature - only much closer and without the mass tourism of hundreds of thousands of day tourists.
The Dry Bay is also the end point of the kayaking and rafting -tours on Alsek River and Tatshenshini .
In the Dry Bay there are no accommodation facilities, only a small emergency shelter, operated during the summer months by the local ranger station. Camping is allowed everywhere, but attention must be paid to the dangers of the high bear population. Apart from the short grass runway and a few short paths, there is no public infrastructure whatsoever, the nearest cellular network is 150 km away.
Commercial fishing
Gill nets are built up as gill nets in the current, through which the salmon move upstream to their spawning grounds. The sharp decline in the number of catches and the drop in prices caused professional fishing to decline sharply, but over 500 tons of wild salmon are still caught every year.
Sport fishing and hunting
In addition to isolated trapping by the last remaining First Nations , the special situation due to the outsourcing as “only protected area” enables sport hunting in the forests around Dry Bay, which would actually be a national park. The stalking is moose, grizzly, black bear, dall sheep and Alaskan mountain goat.
literature
- Donald J. Orth: Dictionary of Alaska Place Names , Washington DC: GPO, 1967.
Web links
- Dry Bay in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey
- Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, Alaska (official site, English)
- History & Culture of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve (English)
Salmon spawning
Harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) , also seal
Moose (Alces alces)
Dall sheep (Ovis dalli) , also Alaskan snow sheep
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Individual evidence
- ^ Thomas F. Thornton: Being and Place Among the Tlingit , University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2008.
- ↑ Dry Bay in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey
- ^ Dry Bay Geonames, US Geological Survey
- ↑ JJ Clague and VN Rampton: Neoglacial Lake Alsek , Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 19, Issue 1, pp. 94-117, 1982.
- ↑ National Park Administration
- ↑ Ranger station in Dray Bay: Call sign "Dry Bay Ranger, KWA 728" on marine VHF channel 16 24/7 .
- ↑ Dry Bay Airstrip, IATA code: 3AK