The 1899 Harriman Expedition that first charted this spectacular fjord carried several noted university professors on board, and they named the fjord’s glaciers after prestigious East Coast colleges such as Harvard and Yale.

Point Adolphus, on the northern tip of Alaska’s Chichagof Island, is a fantastic place to see humpback whales, lured here by the nutrient-rich waters during the summer. It’s also a top birding spot, with species including marbled murrelets, pigeon guillemots, Pacific loons, pelagic cormorants and black-legged kittiwakes.

Beautifully located next to the longest fjord in North America, Haines is one of the most attractive cruise ports in Alaska, surrounded by mountains, forests and glaciers. It’s also home to the world’s largest concentration of bald eagles, and a great place to spot grizzly bears.

The spectacular Tracy Arm Fjord, south of Juneau, is one of Alaska’s most awe-inspiring sights, where waterfalls tumble down the sides of the twin Sawyer Glaciers and huge chunks of ice break off and float out across the water. It’s also a wildlife hotspot, with the chance to spot whales, dolphins, eagles, sea lions and bears.

The breathtaking Misty Fjords National Monument is a 3,570-square-mile swathe of virgin forest and plunging fjords, just to the east of Ketchikan. As the name suggests, the fjords are often cloaked in a fine mist, and the wilderness is home to bears, bald eagles, whales and more.

Arriving by ship in the misty port city of Prince Rupert, on the coast of British Columbia, is a memorable experience. This is an important cultural site for the Tsimshian people, one of Canada’s aboriginal First Nations, and it’s also a wildlife hotspot, home to a grizzly bear sanctuary and the highest concentration of humpback whales in North America.

Alert Bay, named after the Royal Navy ship HMS Alert in 1860, is a village on tiny Cormorant Island, just off the coast of the much larger Vancouver Island and part of the ancestral lands of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation. Look out for humpback, orca and gray whales in the surrounding seas, along with white-sided dolphins and sea lions.