Chatham Strait and Pavlof Harbor
I couldn’t sleep well last night for the knowledge that we would be entering into whale waters today. The anticipation made me restless, and so earlier than usual, I made my way to the bridge to find out if anything had been seen. Just minutes before my arrival, Captain Carden had spotted a grouping of whale spouts near the coastline ahead near Tenakee Inlet. There! Again! Giving each other minute directions, binoculars fixed with intense concentration, we stared into the grey dawn of Chatham Strait. It was soon confirmed: the bubblenet-feeding humpback whales were there. With immense satisfaction and excitement, I decided it was time to wake everyone up, and within a short while we had practically everyone out on deck.
The gulls overhead proved to be exquisite indicators of where the circle of bubbles would form, helping us all immensely. The hydrophone went down into the water, and the eerie sounds of hunting whales had our hair standing on end, along with our imaginations of what was happening down under.
After an hour, the group of five humpbacks broke up their cooperative efforts and individuals swam off in different directions. For us this meant continuing into Pavlof Harbor inside Freshwater Bay and with our plans for walks. Before we even dropped anchor however, five brown bears were seen on a nearby beach. Three bears of almost the same size were hanging out together, which probably meant they were siblings. The other two were solitary males, and kept their distance from each other and everyone else. We finally disembarked near the salmon stream where we encountered a female brown bear with two very young cubs. One was dark brown into black and the other light brown with blond highlights. She proceeded to spend over an hour feeding along the waterfall riffles, allowing everyone fantastic views of her lightning-fast reaction-times when catching salmon, and to watch with wonder as the cubs learned from watching their mother, and ate as much as they could at the same time. Some of the walkers had them cross their path at a good distance, as she circled back to the falls for another gourmet meal of pink salmon.
We thought the day done as we sailed away from the bears, almost exhausted with the emotion of what we had seen by now. However, it only took the initiation of a presentation in the lounge (on birds), to bring out the Orcas, or killer whales. Our Second Mate on the bridge with sharp eyes, great binoculars and dedication, spotted the killer whales at a distance. Once we caught up with them, they kept us on our toes with their variable behaviors of spy-hopping, a rare breach or two, pectoral and tail slaps from an up-side down position. We were thrilled to have a couple of hours with these most amazing creatures of the oceans, and felt very much that today we had been “over-achievers,” by S.E. Alaska standards.
I couldn’t sleep well last night for the knowledge that we would be entering into whale waters today. The anticipation made me restless, and so earlier than usual, I made my way to the bridge to find out if anything had been seen. Just minutes before my arrival, Captain Carden had spotted a grouping of whale spouts near the coastline ahead near Tenakee Inlet. There! Again! Giving each other minute directions, binoculars fixed with intense concentration, we stared into the grey dawn of Chatham Strait. It was soon confirmed: the bubblenet-feeding humpback whales were there. With immense satisfaction and excitement, I decided it was time to wake everyone up, and within a short while we had practically everyone out on deck.
The gulls overhead proved to be exquisite indicators of where the circle of bubbles would form, helping us all immensely. The hydrophone went down into the water, and the eerie sounds of hunting whales had our hair standing on end, along with our imaginations of what was happening down under.
After an hour, the group of five humpbacks broke up their cooperative efforts and individuals swam off in different directions. For us this meant continuing into Pavlof Harbor inside Freshwater Bay and with our plans for walks. Before we even dropped anchor however, five brown bears were seen on a nearby beach. Three bears of almost the same size were hanging out together, which probably meant they were siblings. The other two were solitary males, and kept their distance from each other and everyone else. We finally disembarked near the salmon stream where we encountered a female brown bear with two very young cubs. One was dark brown into black and the other light brown with blond highlights. She proceeded to spend over an hour feeding along the waterfall riffles, allowing everyone fantastic views of her lightning-fast reaction-times when catching salmon, and to watch with wonder as the cubs learned from watching their mother, and ate as much as they could at the same time. Some of the walkers had them cross their path at a good distance, as she circled back to the falls for another gourmet meal of pink salmon.
We thought the day done as we sailed away from the bears, almost exhausted with the emotion of what we had seen by now. However, it only took the initiation of a presentation in the lounge (on birds), to bring out the Orcas, or killer whales. Our Second Mate on the bridge with sharp eyes, great binoculars and dedication, spotted the killer whales at a distance. Once we caught up with them, they kept us on our toes with their variable behaviors of spy-hopping, a rare breach or two, pectoral and tail slaps from an up-side down position. We were thrilled to have a couple of hours with these most amazing creatures of the oceans, and felt very much that today we had been “over-achievers,” by S.E. Alaska standards.
