If it is possible, this evening's Whale Watching adventure was as spectacular or MORE so than this morning's visit to the Sawyer Glacier! Before I even start trying to describe the adventure of this evening let me tell you that it is impossible to recapture what we saw tonight either in video or still photographs. I think that maybe, MAYBE if we had been filming with a professional-grade high definition camera and IF you were watching on a jumbo HD screen you might come close to what we witnessed. But truly, it was an amazing experience! To quote the environmental narrator/guide who was on our excursion, "....I am out of neurons! What you saw tonight has NEVER happened on this tour. In twenty five years of living here and watching whales I've NEVER seen all three of the special events occur in one outing. AND - the number of whales, and whale sightings you had tonight is easily more than the combined number of whales & whale sightings seen by the rest of these tours COMBINED for this past week! I don't know if you can appreciate how special tonight has been......"
Juneau Whale Watching Highlight Video
The evening started off without much fanfare as we saw several boats circled around what seemed to be a whale site, and we even caught a glimpse of a dorsal fin. But our captain decided she'd take us further south to see smaller wildlife on Skull Island and then come back for a good look. We saw some seals and birds, but then came back near the many other boats. Before left port our bus driver had said how remarkable it had been that we did NOT have rain yesterday in Ketchikan - it rains EVERY day (over 15 feet per year!). And we had had a spectacular morning in Tracy Arm....but now clouds were gathering and there had been some light rain on the way to tonight's boat and while we were boarding.
There appeared to be clear skies in the direction we were going but heavy rain clouds were followign us. Well, when we stopped to look for the whales the first thing that happened when the first sighting of whales occurred was in the distance there was a spectacular show of lightning. Not such a big deal to us Floridians, but the narrator told us that she'd seen lightning here at best five times in her lifetime! WOW - she said, "it is most certainly going to be a special evening!" Within moments, nearly simultaneously a humpback whale breached (lept out of the water - yes, just like on the Prudential commercials!) and off to the side an amazing "bubble feeding" occured! The site of so many whales coming up at the same time AND the whale leaping out of the water was almost too much to comprehend. Luckily as you can see we captured in on film - though trust me, it just isn't the same as being less than 100 yards from this actually happening! For the next several minutes we saw one "blow" after another followed by the hump back whale surfacing and then diving again leaving either it's dorsal fin and/or side fin to slowly slide back into the water.
At one point this "bubble feeding" occured several times RIGHT AROUND a smaller vessel, so much so you wondered if their boat was going to just be overcome with the activity, or if the whales would come up next right through the bottom of the boat. Our captain manuevered closer and shut down the engine. They dropped a sonar microphone and we could hear the whales communicating just before they surfaced oh-so-close to us in yet another bubble feeding frenzy. The photos we caught - especially Kim's clear photograph were pretty amazing as you can see. We stayed for some time after this, and while we had many more sightings, we didn't have any nearly as close. But it had been breath taking to not only see so many whales, but so many whales, so many times.....and especially the one sighting so close to us. As we headed back to port the narrator / environmental guide reiterated just how spectacular an event we'd just been a part of. Dan talked to her personally and you could tell she was genuine - this kind of thing just DOESN'T HAPPEN! When we got back on board we were too late for dinner, but not too late to celebrate an AMAZING DAY with matching frozen mudslides!
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