My one wish while in Alaska was to see Orca, sadly that was not to be, apparently they rarely are seen in the Sound, but I might just get to see some next time we are there on the ferry trip up to Juneau.
But we still went in search of whales, on a sort of sunny but chilly morning, out in a little boat on choppy waters with our Captain Dan. All I can saw was it was AWESOME, I love being on the water, I love being in fast boats on the water and Captain Dan zoomed us over the choppy water in search of whales.
When I say a small boat, I mean a smallish boat, the cabin only just fit the four of us, one other random passenger and Captain Dan. It was up close and personal in the small space, good thing we were having lots of fun and no one got seasick.
Now Captain Dan took us to look for sea otters and we saw some in the distance (we saw them better right off our deck) so it was off to look for whales. 'Watch out for the tell tale spray' he told us, and then before we could even think about looking we saw it. Off the port bow, a distant misty spray floating on the breeze, so off we went, and sure enough saw a whale. But Captain Dan wasn't that easily satisfied, so he took us to another spot, zooming across the chop, while we all hung on.
And he was true to his word, we found more whales, lots and lots and lots of whales, humpback whales.
At one point we had six of them on the starboard side of the boat and 4 on the port side, when right in front of us one surfaced, causing Captain Dan to throw the boat into reverse and all of us to almost wet our pants!!! Boy it was so close, just AWESOME.
Hubby took all of these photos, braving the back deck while we bounced around on the waves, I was more than a little worried he was going to go for a swim so my lovely daughter in law held onto the back of his pants at one point.
We have whale watching here in Western Australia but never have I heard of people seeing as many whales as we saw that day, pretty sure it was well over 30 different whales in the 2 hours period we were out there. Well worth every penny that we spent.
So here are hubby's photos, hope you enjoy them as much as I do now looking back at them.
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There she blows Captain
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| First you see a breath |
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| Then a whale starting to come up, but not the one that was breathing |
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| Then a little more up while the other two are nowhere to be seen, all that is left is their misty breath |
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| Then it starts to go down again |
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| That's right 3 whales breathing all at once |
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| Another tale wave |
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| Getting ready to go |
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| Going |
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| Almost gone |
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| Is that whale waving at us?? While another surfaces close by. Or could it be an Orca fin and we just didn't notice?? |
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| Love this tale wave |
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See what I mean about hubby nearly falling overboard!!! That flat patch of water (top leftish) was from the whale that surfaced in front of the boat, the white water at the bottom is the churn from us going in reverse!!! Phew, good skippering Captain Dan!!! |
Thanks for popping by xxxx