Chatham Strait
When whales imitate popcorn, you just don’t know where to start. That was the odd but accurate description used by Bette Lu this afternoon as exuberant whales flung themselves clear of the waters of Chatham Strait. A variety of cetaceanal body parts had ephemeral moments of dryness. There was full body breaching as well as a bit of peduncle tossing accentuated by a little pectoral slap here and there. Totally awesome, to put it mildly.
We quickly ran out of superlatives when the synchronized breaching started. This all happened after several surfacing’s of bubble net feeding. A group of at least seven whales cooperatively fed on herring (note the one escaping fish in the image) using bubbles as a “barrier” tool while another whale vocalized; eventually everyone came to the surface with maws agape. Ditto with our maws. The whales were catching herring while we were capturing memories. Stunning, to say the least.
While we waited in anticipation of the next surfacing, our impatient trigger fingers continued to press shutter releases, it sounded like little chirping birds on the bow as we continued to take random focus on points where we guessed the next outburst of blubbery bodies would occur. We did get warning, we eaves dropped with our hydrophone in the water. This gave us advance notice that the whales were gathered and closing in on herring once again. A bit of an elongated whoo, whooing vocalization and the waters separated once again with several 40-ton bodies inflating, rising and then slowly lowering and deflating like exhausted dirigibles back into the sea.
Our day ended with a smattering of whales around Point Adolphus. Teasing glimpses of several whales sprinkled all around the ship left us dancing on deck in different directions for a more direct view. Delightful, to say the least.
Such was our introduction to the incredible wildlife of Southeast Alaska. We should all feel very fortunate to have experienced such an amazing spectacle on our first full day of discovery in Alaska.
