No Alaskan vacation is complete without a once-in-a-lifetime wildlife tour. Bird watchers can catch more than 450 species, including puffins, bald eagles, ospreys, loons, and owls. Carnivore lovers can see bobcats, coyotes, red foxes, arctic foxes, wolves, grizzly bears, polar bears, black bears, or grizzly bears.
Going on an Alaska cruise? You might see beluga whales, killer whales, blue whales, humpback whales, seals, walruses, sea otters and more! Other mammals to watch out for include moose, caribou, sheep, bats, pikas, arctic hares, martens, mink, muskrats, and muskox. There are plenty of Alaska Wilderness Tours to help you take a look!
Whale watching is one of the top tours that people take in the state of Alaska. “The time the cruise ships are there is when the humpback whales and orcas are feeding, so you’re very likely to see them,” says Robert Blythman, director of Carnival Cruise Lines.
He says some tours, like the Whale Watching and Wildlife Quest at Auke Bay, come with a money-back guarantee. “It’s a 100 percent guarantee you’ll see otters,” Blythman added, noting that there are 70,000 of these playful creatures swimming in Alaskan waters.
He personally recommends the City of Sitka’s Sea Otter Quest. Humpback and orca whales can be seen surfacing and traversing the Inside Passage, which is a popular Alaskan cruise route, or in Prince William Sound, the Kodiak Archipelago, Glacier Bay National Park, and Kenai Fjords National Park. Humpback whales sometimes disappear for thirty minutes at a time, but killer whales generally move in pods with ships.
Beluga whales are most easily seen in Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm near Anchorage. Many drivers stop between Beluga Point (mile 110) and Bird Point Scenic Overlook (mile 96) for a magnificent view of these endangered whales. Bowhead whales, Alaska’s state marine mammal, can be seen in the Arctic Ocean and North Bering Sea.
Another group of wildlife viewers in Alaska comes for the bears. There are approximately 100,000 black bears and 30,000 grizzly bears, representing 98% of the total grizzly bear population in the US.
You can take a $100 “Bear Hunt” from the harbor at Icy Strait Point or take a $300 – $1,600 flight to more remote locations such as Pack Creek (Admiralty Island) or the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. At Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, grizzly bears often feed on spawning salmon during the summer months, which can be seen from a viewing platform.
You can catch a glimpse of grizzly bears sleeping or browsing on a bus tour of Denali National Park. The Kenai River occasionally has fishermen and bear rendezvous points. Black bears generally congregate at Anan Creek, south of Wrangell.
Polar bears live along the Arctic Ocean and on the coast of the Bering Sea. The Alaska Zoo in Anchorage is the easiest place to see this elusive creature.
While you may want to choose animal-specific private tours in Alaska, there are some places you definitely don’t want to miss! Tours in Denali National Park range from a four-hour Natural History tour to an eight-hour Tundra Wilderness tour and a twelve-hour Kantishna Experience tour.
The Anchorage Zoo houses many endangered animals in a captive setting, while the Anan Wildlife Observatory in the Tongass National Forest and Denali National Park display animals in their natural environments. The Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve is a breathtaking experience just off the Haines Highway.