Kachemak Bay: An Exploration of People and Place continues in the marine gallery, where marine subjects come to life.
The sea and its bounty greet you eye-to-eye as an octopus glides past. A sea star creeps over the edge of a rock, an anemone opens and closes, a sculpin forages for food. Other intertidal specimens in the aquaria invite further discovery. More than 75 species of fish, birds, and mammals that live in and by the sea are found throughout the museum, including the rare Bering Sea Beaked Whale, Steller Sea Lion, Beluga Whale, and Sperm Whale.
(Following Spring 2019 remodel, aquaria have not yet been restocked. Stay tuned! We are working on getting the aquaria up and running this summer, 2021.)
The Gull Island seabird camera is back in action here at the Pratt Museum & Park! This May, Jason Sodergren of Taiga Electronics, David Flory of SPITwSPOTS Inc., and volunteers Raymond King and Parker Lowney along with staff members of the Pratt Museum & Park ventured out to Gull Island. The crew retrieved and reinstalled the equipment which had spent the winter on the island when attempts to recover it last fall were thwarted by the weather. The gull camera has always been one of the most popular aspects of the museum and we are so thrilled we can bring it back and provide this unique experience to our community. It now can be controlled with a joystick, which offers a 360-degree view of the nesting birds on this untouchable island in the middle of Kachemak Bay.
Karl Stoltzfus and Gareth Chesley of Bay Excursions donated their time, talent, and resources to transport the team back and forth across the Bay as they do every year and the team managed to bring the battered camera back to life for one more go around. Please stop by and take a look at the action on the island where you have a limitless view of glaucous-winged gulls, kittiwakes, cormorants, and more. You can even zoom into the puffin burrows.
Gull Island is owned and managed by Seldovia Native Association, Inc. The Pratt Museum & Park is granted a conditional use permit to place camera equipment on the island for educational and scientific purposes.
A live stream is available on YouTube here.
The Pratt Museum & Park staff would like to express their appreciation and gratitude for the commitment, time, and skills each volunteer has offered to keep this valuable resource alive for the education and pleasure of our community on the Peninsula, around the Bay, and across the state.