Hutchins Bay is on the eastern shore of Glacier Bay, partially surrounding the Beardslee Islands in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, about 155 miles (249 km) southeast of Yakutat and 8 miles (13 km) north of Gustavus, Alaska. The bay was named in 1942 by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey for the large numbers of Hutchins geese nesting there. The Beardslee Islands are a group of more than 22 islands, islets and reefs, bounded by an area about 9.5 miles (15 km) long and 7 miles (11 km) wide, between Bartlett Cove to the south and Beartrack Cove to the north. During the Last Glacial Maximum, about 18,000 years ago, a massive ice sheet covered the Icy Strait region and spread onto the continental shelf. The ice retreated before 14,000 years ago and withdrew far up the Y-shaped fjord of Glacier Bay during the relatively warm temperatures of the early Holocene. During the subsequent Neoglacial period, from 6,000 to 1,600 years ago, the ice in Glacier Bay readvanced almost to the present-day Beardslee Islands, followed by more than a millennium when the glacial front was nearly stationary. Beginning about 1700, during the Little Ice Age (1300–1900), the long-stationary glacier surged forward and overran the Beardslee Islands, with the ice front protruding into Icy Strait by 1770. The immense mass of the Little Ice Age glacier caused isostatic depression and a corresponding rise in relative sea level to about 13 feet (4 m) above its current height in Icy Strait. In 1794, Captain George Vancouver noted the ice front protruding into Icy Strait, though by then the glacier had begun to recede. Post-glacial rebound has been underway since the retreat began, so relative sea level in Icy Strait, lower Glacier Bay and the Beardslee Islands has been declining by 0.6–0.8 inches (1.4–2.0 cm) a year. The gradual reemergence of coastal land over the last two centuries is evident in changes to vegetation, shoreline configuration and seafloor bathymetry.

In 1879, John Muir was the first white man known to visit and explore the glaciers of the bay, traveling by canoe with the Reverend S. Hall Young of Fort Wrangell as a companion. In 1880, Captain Lester A. Beardslee on the USS Jamestown, served as commander of the Department of Alaska, the territory’s designation following the 1867 Alaska Purchase. During the department era, Alaska was under the jurisdiction of the US Army until 1877, the US Dept. of the Treasury from 1877 until 1879, and the US Navy from 1879 until 1884, when it was reorganized as the District of Alaska. In September 1880, Beardslee chartered the steamer Favorite, taking advantage of its monthly visits to trading posts on inland waters. Along with Major William G. Morris and Lieutenant Frederick M. Symonds, he attempted to explore harbors and passes exposed by the receding glacier. In 1922, William S. Cooper wrote a paper for the Ecological Society of America proposing that Glacier Bay be protected as a national monument. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed a proclamation creating Glacier Bay National Monument under the Antiquities Act, though it was confined largely to the glaciated portion of the bay, mostly north of the Beardslee Islands. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to expand the monument by transferring lands from the Tongass National Forest to the National Park Service. This expansion included the Beardslee Islands, and that same year the USC&GS Westdahl conducted the first hydrographic survey of the islands over five months, using sextant fixes, hand-deployed lead lines, wire-drag surveys, and the Dorsey Fathometer No. 3. In 2021, the NOAA Rainier repeated the surveys with multi-beam echosounders and found significant changes in seafloor bathymetry, mostly related to post-glacial rebound. Much of the emerging tideland had become salt marshes and wetlands used by migrating birds, such as the Hutchins goose.

The Hutchins goose, also called the cackling goose (Branta hutchinsii), was named after Thomas Hutchins to honor the English surgeon and naturalist employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Until 2004, the cackling goose was considered the same species, or a subspecies, of the Canada goose. The American Ornithologists’ Union then redesignated the cackling goose as a separate species with five subspecies, based on differences in size, voice, habitat, migration timing and genetics. A short-necked, stubby-billed bird slightly larger than a mallard, the cackling goose closely resembles the Canada goose in plumage. It often forms flocks with other geese, grazing in fields or gathering in wetlands. The subspecies are Bering, Richardson’s, Taverner’s, Small, and Aleutian. The Bering cackling goose was last seen in 1914 or 1929 and is considered extinct, owing to predation by humans and Arctic foxes. Richardson’s is the most common in central North America. Taverner’s is the largest subspecies and is usually pale. The Small is the darkest and typically lacks a neck collar. The Aleutian breeds in the Aleutian Islands and winters along the west coast of North America, and is generally dark with a bold white neck collar. Cackling geese were abundant in Hutchins Bay in 1942 but are now considered uncommon in Glacier Bay in spring and fall, and very rare in summer. They migrate north through Southeast Alaska in spring to coastal Southcentral Alaska, and some fly over the Gulf of Alaska rather than along the coast. In 2018, a bird survey in Southeast Alaska reported the Small subspecies at Gustavus in March, five Aleutian in May at Echo Cove near Juneau, and also in May, hundreds of unidentified northbound cackling geese observed from the cruise ship Emerald Princess off the west coast of Chichagof Island. Read more here and here. Explore more of Hutchins Bay and the Beardslee Islands here: