Tourism

Most of the birders who pulled into Juneau’s Rainforest Trail parking lot at 8 a.m. on Friday were locals, but docent Brenda Wright set some expectations for out-of-towners and newbies.

“This is a really hot spot for red-breasted sapsucker,” she said.

“You’re kidding — that’s why I’m here!” said tour-goer Lynn Hartmann.

She and her partner, Martha Johnson, are visiting Juneau from Minnesota. Hartmann came for the birds: red-breasted sapsuckers, red-throated loons, Pacific wrens and the Pacific-slope flycatcher. She’s among the growing number of tourists who come to Alaska each year to look for birds.

A recent study out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks shows that birders like them could be a boon for the economy and for conservation efforts — especially in rural and remote areas.

Birders stay longer and spend more

The couple is in town for a week, staying at a bed and breakfast. They’ve been to the Mendenhall Glacier to see Arctic terns, took a whale-watching tour for more seabirds, and now they’re on a guided walk through the temperate coastal rainforest with the Audubon Society.

But they’re doing other things, too. Johnson goes to the municipal pool every morning, and she says they’ve been sampling the local restaurants.

“We’ve been trying to take advantage of local culture — you know, we can’t bird 12 hours a day! So it’s been sort of a multifaceted trip,” Johnson said.

Birders are the world’s largest group of eco-tourists. And according to the new study, they’re a real moneymaker in Alaska — and the state has only begun to cash in.

“Birders, compared to non-birders, stay twice as long, and they’re considerably spending more money than the average, or non-birding, visitor to Alaska,” said Tobias Schwoerer, one of the study’s authors and a research professor at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center.

“All the people who said they watched birds, if we sum up their spending, it was over $300 million dollars in 2016,” Schwoerer said.

The more than 300,000 birders a year that visit Alaska generate more than 3,000 jobs in the state, according to the study. Schwoerer likened the jobs figure to the total number of Alaskans employed by other single industries, like telecommunications.

An intact ecosystem

They’re coming because Alaska is home to the world’s largest concentration of shore birds, and it’s a globally significant breeding ground for migratory birds. Alaska has the most Important Bird Areas of any state — and yes, Important Bird Area is an international metric, overseen in the United States by the Audubon Society.

“We have these hotspots, and they’re still intact,” Schwoerer said. “Alaska is kind of the last little bit of wild where they can have a very intact ecosystem to support their populations.”

He says that climate change is increasingly threatening wilderness and biodiversity, but Alaska can capitalize on wildlife tourism through conservation and infrastructure. That means opportunity statewide, but especially in rural places.

Natalie Dawson, another of the study’s authors, says she got the idea for it while guiding in remote parts of Alaska.

“If I was in a community and there was a rare bird that had blown over from some other place in the circumpolar north, I would find people that had traveled thousands of miles just to see individual birds,” she said.

She said birders are motivated to get out where the birds are — places like the North Slope to see eider ducks or out west to the Pribilof Islands for seabirds.

Southeast festivals are a big draw

But Dawson says the study showed that more than half of the birders’ money is spent in Southeast Alaska. She credits that in part to bird festivals like the Hummingbird Festival in Ketchikan and the Bald Eagle Festival in Haines.

“Those festivals do seem to actually, yes, be congregations for birding, tourism and birding related travelers,” Dawson said. “This study shows that if you can come together with a vision for a community and an activity that can draw people in and provide them information about how to experience that wildlife, then it does seem to draw people to your area.”

Cordova’s Copper River Delta Shorebird Festival has lured birders off the road system for decades. The local chamber of commerce estimates that more than 100 visitors this year spent nearly $175,000 in town, jump-starting the local businesses reopening after a quiet winter.

Back on the Rainforest Trail in Juneau, Lynn Hartmann stood in the trees, listening. Varied thrushes were whistling their haunting notes over the melodic song of the Swainson’s thrush.

“It’s like, hearing 20 languages all at once,” Hartmann said.

There was no red-breasted sapsucker, but she and Martha spotted a Pacific slope flycatcher and heard his signature song. And there was still time for the sapsucker — they were in town for a few more days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that as of Monday, its COVID-19 program for cruise ships is no longer in effect. 

All of the major cruise lines had voluntarily enrolled in the program. They agreed to report to the CDC daily counts of confirmed or suspected cases aboard each of their ships operating in U.S. waters, and to follow CDC protocols for reducing the risk of transmission and managing outbreaks on board. 

On its website, the CDC says cruise lines will continue reporting case counts to the agency, but the CDC will no longer share each ship’s COVID status.

Until Monday, the CDC had been publishing a daily color-coded status indicating COVID risk aboard each ship. The system was imprecise, potentially grouping ships with a handful of cases in the same category as ships with hundreds. 

On its website, the CDC now says cruise travelers can contact their cruise lines directly about outbreaks during their trips. Earlier this summer, travelers said cruise lines kept them in the dark during their cruises as COVID outbreaks spread on board.

Cruise lines participating in the CDC program also had to sign agreements with the port communities they visit. The agreements lay out more protocols for reducing risk and managing outbreaks, with an eye on the impact that outbreaks could have on those communities. For example, the port agreements in Southeast Alaska say cruise passengers or crew members requiring hospitalization from COVID are supposed to go to Seattle for treatment. 

In Juneau, Deputy City Manager Robert Barr learned about the CDC’s change after a KTOO reporter called seeking comment. Barr wasn’t certain but says he thinks the port agreements will remain in effect. 

The website Cruise Critic reports that the reaction on its message boards was mostly positive, and that Cruise Line International Association welcomed the development. 

This week marks the start of Kodiak’s first cruise ship season since 2019 — 565 passengers will be on board the Roald Amundsen when it docks at Pier 2 in Kodiak on Thursday.

Aimee Williams is the executive director of the visitors center Discover Kodiak.

“This is a good sign that life is returning back to normal and tourism is returning back to normal.” she said.

Kodiak’s cruise ship season tends to look a little different compared to other parts of the state, Williams says. The ships tend to be smaller than the ones that frequent Southeast Alaska — and there’s a lot less of them.

Thirty large and small cruise ships called in Kodiak back in 2019. That was a record year. This year, just 10 cruise ships will visit the island. Juneau saw 70 large and small cruise ships over the course of its shortened season in 2021, by comparison.

Fifteen cruises were originally on the schedule released by Alaska Maritime Agencies in March, but that number has gone up and down due the ongoing pandemic and invasion of Ukraine.

Williams says that while cruise ship tourism gives Kodiak businesses a boost, its downtown was spared from some of the economic hardships faced by other coastal communities when COVID stopped the cruises from coming.

“When they weren’t here for the last two years, we weren’t devastated, and we didn’t lose businesses because cruise ships weren’t in town,” Williams said. “It’s exciting, and those businesses that are going to make money I’m sure are very excited, but we don’t have to change our posture a lot for when there’s a cruise ship here or when there’s not.”

The Roald Amundsen will continue on to Dutch Harbor after it stops in Kodiak this week, and it will visit twice again in August. Six cruise ships will call in Kodiak throughout September including the Nieuw Amsterdam, which has a carrying capacity of more than 2,000 passengers.

“When those big ships come, anything that’s over like 900 people, we kind of have to change the way we do business downtown,” said Williams.

Kodiak’s cruise ship season wraps up in early October, when the nearly 700-passenger Regatta calls in Kodiak on its voyage from Los Angeles to Tokyo.

Coast Guard divers in Juneau assessed damage to the 2,000-passenger cruise ship Norwegian Sun on Monday.

The Norwegian Cruise Lines ship hit an iceberg near Hubbard Glacier on Saturday. A spokesperson for Norwegian Cruise Lines said the ship was “engulfed by dense fog, limiting visibility,” and that’s the reason it hit what the cruise line is calling a “growler” — a small iceberg about the size of a grand piano.

But passenger Jason Newman of Atlanta, Georgia, says the fog had cleared when he felt the impact.

“The ship had a severe judder,” he said “You could feel the strike. And then it listed minorly.”

Newman said the ship limped out of the bay and all the way to Juneau at 10 mph — he tracked their speed using a phone app. The ship skipped its scheduled Skagway stop on Sunday and reached Juneau on Sunday night at around 5 p.m.

He said passengers did not hear from the captain until 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning, when he confirmed the ship had struck an iceberg.

Newman says passengers were allowed a five-hour shore leave Sunday night in Juneau but were confined to the ship on Monday.

“They told us they couldn’t get the authority to approve us to leave the ship,” he said.

Newman said the cruise line had canceled the entire day of tours for everybody on board by 10 a.m. He had planned a jeep tour in the morning.

“I’m sure that all the tour operators lost revenue,” he said.

The cruise ship was moored at Franklin Street Dock in Juneau until Monday afternoon when it left port. It skipped port calls in Ketchikan and Victoria and headed back to Seattle directly for repairs, according to a spokesperson for Norwegian Cruise Line. The U.S. Coast Guard and other maritime authorities gave it clearance to sail.

The cruise line did not reveal the extent of the damage, but the Norwegian Sun’s next cruise—set to embark on June 30th—is canceled.

Passengers say the cruise line has offered full refunds on the cruise and credits on a future sailing.

This story has been updated to reflect that the ship left Juneau Monday afternoon and cut its itinerary short to head back to Seattle for repairs.

A rockslide early Thursday closed the cruise ship dock in Skagway, prompting one vessel to skip that port altogether.

Part of the dock was damaged during the slide just before 6:30 a.m., according to Jacqui Taylor, a spokeswoman for dock owners White Pass & Yukon Route Railway. No one was injured as the slide sent rock, dirt and vegetation tumbling from a mountainside above the dock.

There were no passengers disembarking at the time, Taylor said. The railway’s geotechnical engineers were assessing the damage Thursday afternoon.

The dock will remain closed to passenger and vehicle traffic Friday to allow further assessment by the railway’s geotechnical engineers, the company said in an update Thursday afternoon.

Four cruise ships scheduled for the pier made alternate plans Thursday, the company said. The Royal Caribbean Quantum of the Seas, which can hold nearly 5,000 passengers, diverted from Skagway on Thursday morning. The Discovery Princess, with a maximum capacity of about 4,600, repositioned and planned to transport passengers to the small-boat harbor by tender.

About a dozen cruise ships use the dock every week to call on the Southeast Alaska city popular for historic buildings preserved as part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. The railroad runs vintage locomotives out of Skagway.

Three more ships were expected to use other docks or a tender on Friday.

“White Pass and Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska are working with our cruise partners to reaccommodate the ships scheduled for this weekend,” Taylor wrote in an email. “Ships are able to tie up on the south end of the Railroad Dock and tender guests a short distance to Skagway’s Small Boat Harbor.”

The Municipality of Skagway Borough does not own the dock and was not participating in the response to the slide as of Thursday, according to borough manager Brad Ryan.

This story was originally published by the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

This story has been updated.

It’s visitor season again in Petersburg, and cruise ship passengers are already wandering the streets in brightly colored jackets. This year a Norwegian cruise line is stopping here for the first time, with a state-of-the-art hybrid ship. And it’s excited to connect with Petersburg’s Norwegian roots.

Passengers arrive in small, bright orange boats. They attend a cultural presentation at the Sons of Norway Hall. And outside, they snap pictures of the Viking ship. It’s a little smaller than their cruise ship, the Roald Amundsen. But it shares the same roots.

“Roald Amundsen was — is — the national hero of Norway,” said Steffen Biersack, an expedition leader with the cruise line. “He’s the first man who actually flew over the North Pole with a with an airship, which then landed close to Nome. So that’s why in Nome, and on the other side, where they started in Svalbard, they have the identical bust of Roald Amundsen in bronze. And he was the very first man sailing through the Northwest Passage. So he’s quite the explorer.”

The MS Roald Amundsen is one of the larger ships to visit Petersburg and can hold just over 500 passengers. It stays out in Frederick Sound and lighters passengers in on smaller boats. It’s sailing to Alaska this summer for the first time after voyages scheduled for 2020 were canceled due to the pandemic.

Hurtigruten Expeditions, the cruise line, began in Norway in the late 1800’s when it established a coastal route.

“In Norway, hardly any places are connected by street. So they had to have a system to provide the people in the fjords with food with news with whatever it is, and then they also transported fish, herring mostly on the coast,” Biersack said.

And if that sounds familiar, the feeling is mutual. Biersack said of Southeast Alaska, “It’s such a stunning country. It’s like Norway on steroids, you know? It’s so much wilder. The peaks are higher. The trees are taller. It’s great.”

The Roald Amundsen was completed in 2019 and  features cutting-edge technology. It’s a hybrid vessel and uses battery packs in conjunction with its four diesel generators. One of the crew described it as a giant floating Prius. Its propellers face forward, so they pull the ship through the water rather than pushing it. And while the ship does have two anchors on board, it doesn’t use them much.

“We have something else which we call DP – dynamic positioning,” said Biersack. “That means the ship has very, very accurate GPS systems, several of them. And this dynamic positioning is operating the bow thrusters and the propellers and keeps the ship in position without an anchor. And it’s so precise that we do not move more than five or four centimeters at all. Even when the wind picks up, then the system kicks in and gives us more stability. So then we can stay in a spot where an anchor would actually not catch.”

The ship will continue to Vancouver and then turn around for its next voyage up to Nome. It’s scheduled to call in Petersburg two more times this summer.

“I had a lot of very big honchos on the ship last trip, because it was the very first time we did that,” said Biersack. “And we all agreed that Petersburg is the coziest of the places. Definitely. And you have a Viking ship.”

During the Roald Amundsen’s next stop, the Petersburg Chamber of Commerce plans to present it with a wooden plaque, hand painted in traditional Norwegian style.