Welcome to the Zegrahm Expeditions resources page! Here you will find inspiration for your next adventure and information from your last adventure, produced by our field leaders, Seattle office staff, and contributing writers. From blog posts and field reports (daily recaps of a past expeditions with images) to photo galleries and videos, explore your world from our perspective.
The reviews are in: Michael Moore has another hit on his hands.
We’re not speaking of the documentary filmmaker, but rather the charismatic naturalist who leads Zegrahm expeditions around the world. Moore’s most recent, an Alaskan overland adventure this past July, earned enthusiastic praise, particularly for his skills in directing the cast of thousands...
Brent Stephenson is an ornithologist who spent years studying the breeding biology of Australasian gannets in New Zealand. He co-re-discovered the "extinct" New Zealand storm-petrel in 2003, and has traveled virtually everywhere, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, Australia, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, French Polynesia, China, the...
For almost two decades, Ingrid Nixon's work in expedition tourism has propelled her about the planet. From Antarctica to Greenland, Madagascar to Easter Island, she enjoys sharing the wonder of exploration and discovery with like minds. Originally from Western Washington, Ingrid was recently living in Interior Alaska where she worked for the National Park Service in...
We recently completed two wildly successful voyages to Alaska and the far eastern corners of Russia. Not only was the wildlife plentiful, our designated photographer onboard the Caledonian Sky, Michael Moore, was able to capture some beautiful images. Here are the top photos from our Wild Alaska and the Bering Sea, and Best of the Russian Far East expeditions.
More than a hundred years ago, a small steamship set sail from Seattle, bound for Alaska's wild coastal waterways and the annals of history. The ship was the George W. Elder; at her helm stood the venerable Edward H. Harriman, an east coast railroad man who had organized an unprecedented scientific expedition to a world as far removed from turn-of-the-century industrialized New York as one could possibly imagine.
Today, we are preparing to embark on a modern-day voyage to retrace the...
Two inseparable passions have shaped naturalist Kevin Clement's life since his childhood in the mountains of California. "I don't remember a time when I wasn't interested in the natural world or a time when I didn't love to draw," he says. "I don't really distinguish between sitting with my sketchbook and drawing, say, a tree, and studying its life history in a field guide. To me, they're both ways to learn about the tree and try to understand it."
After graduating from college,...
The annual return of Pacific salmon to the rivers of the north, in numbers beyond calculation, represents a massive delivery of protein and nutrients from the oceans to the land and the forest. The salmon drive that entire coastal ecosystem, and, in particular, they feed the bears.
To be sure, there are grizzly bears that live where the salmon runs don't reach and who never partake of that seasonal abundance. But those bears are smaller and less numerous than their coastal cousins....
Morning light revealed a low gray cloudbank blanketing the 700-foot tall peaks of steep-sided King Island—the first stop on our Wild Alaska and the Bering Sea expedition. We bundled up, and carefully made our way down to the Zodiacs for an early morning exploration of this spectacular place. Named by Captain Cook in 1778 for a member of his party, King Island was once the winter home of a group of about 200 Inupiat. They subsisted on walrus, seals, and...
The walrus is a visually peculiar creature. To see one up close is to understand why scientists called it Odobenus rosmarus, tooth-walker, and why, in Old Norse, they were known as hval-hross, whale-horses. Indubitably, the walrus is a curious beast.
At sea, they blow and spout like small cetaceans, though they bellow like buffalo. Their rubber-like faces reveal an extraordinarily small and muscular mouth with a bristly muzzle sporting several hundred long, stiff...
I had a grandfather who came to Alaska during the Depression, when he was a young man. He rambled around a good bit and tried his hand at various things: commercial fishing, prospecting, mining in the Fortymile country... Then he came back to the Lower 48 to start a family.
Years before I dreamed I would ever visit Alaska, let alone someday call it home, he used to tell me stories about it. He’d say, “Gettin’ up there and gettin’ around isn’t easy. But then, if it was easy,...
