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Turnagain Arm’s narrowest point brings both marine
and land creatures close to the highway. Beluga whales swim just
offshore while songbirds fly among spruce branches. Mountain goats and
black bears forage far above.
Yellow Warbler
Hermit Thrush
NOTABLE
SPECIES
Beluga Whale
Harbor Seal
Black Bear
Mountain Goat
Red Squirrel
Bald Eagle
Black-Billed Magpie
Hermit Thrush
Varied Thrush
Yellow Warbler
Macoma balthica
clam
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FIELD NOTES
Bird Point
bulges a half mile out into Turnagain Arm, providing stunning
views of white adult and gray adolescent beluga whales as they
chase fish. Watch for the whales during hours just before and
after high tide. The peninsula’s bedrock shoreline retains grooves
carved by glaciers and can be explored by careful hikers. Harbor
seals occasionally enter the more remote coves, and tiny shells
from the Arm’s sole clam species,
Macoma balthica,
can sometimes be found on beaches. Very rarely, gray and killer
whales venture into the arm and can be watched from Bird Point and
other turnouts. In cool weather, mountain goats forage on the
3,000-foot slopes of Penguin Ridge, the mountain wall that looms
above the arm to the northeast. Watch for black bears and cubs in
avalanche chutes and meadows throughout the summer. Forest
songbirds and small mammals live in the woods. Dozens of bald
eagles work the mud flats during fish runs.
HABITAT
White spruce, hybrid Lutz
spruce (a cross between white and Sitka spruce) and paper birch
cover the interior of Bird Point and high ground along the shore.
Salt marsh sedges have colonized wet areas along shoreline
bedrock. Low tide exposes extensive mud flats with some patches of
rocks and intertidal seaweed. This lowland forest gives way to
alder brush and then alpine tundra on the way up Penguin Ridge.
VIEWING TIP
Beluga whales
follow the fish: eulachon (small, oily
fish sometimes called "hooligan")
in May, and coho salmon in August and September. The best viewing
occurs early in the ebbing tide, when the current begins to
quicken. Whale pods often exit the upper Arm by swimming toward
Bird Point before passing from sight just off the bedrock reefs to
the west.
HELPFUL HINTS
Dress for
Turnagain Arm’s cold wind. Bring a bike to explore the paved trail
along the mountains, where beavers have colonized pools at the
bottom of avalanche chutes.
GETTING THERE
Seward Highway milepost
96.5. There are several other viewpoints along Turnagain Arm
between Bird Point and Girdwood.
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