Many factors contribute to the superlative nature of the Alaskan experience: an endless archipelago of islands, vast mountain ranges, enormous glaciers, and deep forests. The abundance of light in the month of June deserves a spot high on the list.
The impact of the sun’s manic generosity from April to August – and, no doubt, its balancing stinginess October to February – cannot be overstated. We visited at the peak of its generosity during the last two weeks of June. For several weeks surrounding the solstice, the sun provides an all-you-can-eat buffet of sunlight. Light, light, and more light. Of course, sunlight should not be confused with sunshine. In Southeast Alaska, on our remote island in the mouth of the Icy Strait, despite the fact that we were often tucked under a low ceiling of cloud and fog, the light goes on and on. Around 11 p.m. the sky darkened for a few hours (I obeyed an imperative to rest my eyes, body and mind during the precious period of dimness). By 3 a.m. the thrushes were singing and it was bright again. That much daylight has a profound effect on you while camping in a tent.
The effect of the light is similarly profound on the forest and the sea. As gardeners in Southern Appalachia, we are blessed with a relatively mild climate and abundant water, but we have an overlooked disadvantage: the combination of a short-ish growing season (thanks to our elevation) and modest midsummer daylight (due to our latitude). During the heart of the growing season, (June and July), we average about 14.3 hours of light each day. The northern Tongass rainforest averages 17.8. Palmer, Alaska, where gardeners grow world record cabbages, averages 18.8 hours of daylight in the heart of summer. That’s equivalent to an extra ten 24-hr days of sunlight over the course of two months.
All this light rains down on a chain of life that produces some of the largest organisms on earth – 200’ tall Sitka spruce, 1600-pound brown bears, kelp that grows 18” a day, and 6-ton orcas (the largest dolphins in the world). Hawaiian humpbacks spend summers in Alaskan waters gorging on plankton and small fish, heading south for the winter to shelter and reproduce in warm tropical waters. Astonishingly, these whales (at 40-tons they are among the largest animals to ever live on earth) eat so much during their northern feeding season, that they can fast all winter long. With slow heartbeats, nearly frictionless movement, and a layer of blubber that scoffs at entropy, they are geniuses at conserving energy.
Sea lions, eagles and ravens, all among the biggest of their kind, fuel their bodies with fish and the produce of the tidelines and the forest. The “land otters” I saw were notably larger than our WNC river otters. Despite the size difference, land otters of Alaska and river otters on NC are the same species, but in Alaska they need to distinguish between land and sea otters. Sea otters – a separate genus altogether – are abundant in the Icy Strait and are triple the size of their landlubber cousins.
Gargantuanism imbued by the sunlight isn’t limited to warm-blooded mammals and birds. In the spruce rainforest, Western skunk cabbages grow the largest leaves in North America. On the seafloor, sunflower sea stars grow to three feet in diameter. A good sized halibut hauled from the deep is longer than a human and over 100 pounds.
An ocean of factors go into making the Icy Strait one of the richest stretches of sea on Earth, but the quantity of summertime sunlight earns a place on the list.
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