Black Bear Meal
September 17th, 2025
We traveled to Kake Island. There are shooting opportunities for black bears there. The bears are there to feed on the spawning salmon that were everywhere. Black bears eating salmon was one of my bucket list wishes for this trip.
There is a small town there with no pier for our ship so we had to use the zodiac to get on to the island. Not easy to get into the zodiac with my weakened left leg. I had lots of help from people and got in and out ok. The trip on the boat was somewhat stressful. I kept worrying about the boat tipping over. The cold water combined with irreparable damage to camera gear wore on me each time someone climbed into the zodiac. I managed it and got more comfortable.
At first there were no bears. A mother and cubs appeared too far away from us and with backlighting. The other photographers walked back to a bridge where they got lots of pictures, but I wanted something where the spawning salmon were. I was joined by another photographer. Just as we were about to give up, a single bear showed up and started to feed. The bear kept reaching in to pick a salmon from the water and eating the eggs.
