Valdez July 28 2013 Grizzle Bear Part 1 of 3

Valdez Bears have about 6 months to feed before hibernating for the winter.  Most of their food is consumed in the late summer and fall.  Bears can run as fast as a horses and can outrun humans any day of the week.  Momma bears with cubs are especially dangerous because they will defend their cubs if they get nervous or feel threatened.  Most bears have 2 cubs.  If you see a bear with 3 cubs you are very lucky, but 4 bears cubs are very rare.  Grizzly Bears range from blond to nearly black and have a dished-in face and a large hump of heavy muscle above the shoulders.  Their claws are about 4 inches long.  The following pictures were taken a very short distance from their location.  We were lucky that the bears had a very large food supply and that most of the people used good sense in getting their pictures, but there is always a few that get too close. 

 

   This grizzly has a cub in by the shore  

She is starting to charge toward the people on the bridge

She is getting closer      

Picture of mommy bear and her 4 clubs taken from across the stream.  This was the first time that we had a chance of see a grizzly this close.   Check out the people by the fence.    

  

 

This hatchery was completed in 1983 and rear and release 230 million pink (humpy) salmon are 2 to 3 pounds and 20 to 25 inches long, 18 million chum (keta) salmon are 8 pounds 25 to 27 inches long, 2 million silver (coho) salmon are about 12 pounds and 25 to 30 inches long and 300,000 king (chinook) salmon are about 20 pound and 30 to 40 inches long.  Each female yields about 1,700 eggs, they keep the hatchlings in the inside holding pens until the spring of the next year.  Then they are put in the pens in the river and fed for about 1 month.  When they are released they are a stronger and larger fish, then the salmon that develop in the wild, enabling them to escape predators.  The fish ladder allows the adult salmon to go right up to the building that will take their eggs. 

 

The pink salmon are heading for the fish ladder.  This is just some of the 230 million pink salmon that were released.   

The beginning of the ladder  

One of the gates on the fish ladder.  It is very hard for the salmon to swim up the ladder.  They have to take a break before going up any higher.    

The last pool before the final gate.   

The final gate for the salmon. 

This is the salt water rearing pens they use to allow the salmon to feed and grow stronger and larger to enabling them to escape predators.    

The people taking the pictures are right beside the fish ladder.    

Enjoy the rest of the pic of the bears.  It was great getting this close to the bears.

One of the clubs is learning how to fish.    

Look at the those claws on one of the clubs.

 

  Where did mommy go? 

 

Mommy bear has a scent of something.   A black mommy bear and her three clubs just came out of the woods.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This little club stays by it mommy.  It has not learned how to fish on its own.   

Mommy is trying to get all of the clubs to go back into the woods.  Check out more grizzly bear at Valdez July 29, 2013.