Animals & Plants of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve

The 3 animals, plants, and fungi you can find at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, with sizes, diets, and whether you should worry. See the full park guide at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.

Glacier Bay is a fjord where tidewater glaciers still calve into the sea and the water holds more animals than the land. Humpback whales feed in the bay from spring to fall, harbor seals haul out on the bergs, and Sitka spruce fill in wherever the glacier lets go. Most of the park is watched from a boat.

Anything here that bites?

Keep away

• Harbor seal: Harbor seals are wild animals with strong jaws, and they bite to defend themselves.
• Humpback whale: Humpbacks are not a danger to people on shore, and the rules here protect them, not you.

Everything else on this page is harmless. What each group means.

• Mammals
• Plants

• Mammal

  Harbor seal

  Phoca vitulina

  A gray, dog-snouted true seal that rests hauled out on rocks and floating glacier ice, bobbing in Alaska fjords with ear holes and no ear flaps.

• Mammal

  Humpback whale

  Megaptera novaeangliae

  A giant ocean mammal famous for breaching and long songs, following the food to Glacier Bay every summer to eat until its blubber is thick again.

• Plant

  Sitka spruce

  Picea sitchensis

  The giant of the coastal fog belt, whose light, strong wood built early airplanes, with needles sharp enough to prick your finger.