A morning of safety and operations briefings is never a particularly interesting affair, however, once it becomes punctuated with whale sightings, it becomes far more enthralling!  This was just such a day that we had on board the National Geographic Sea Bird. We began our day by cruising in Chatham Strait looking for wildlife and sure enough a group of feeding humpback whales appeared. After spending some good quality time with the majestic beasts from the deep we moved on to our afternoon landing at Lake Eva, a legendary landing on Baranof Island. Here, we deployed the kayaks and expedition landing craft, and went for a couple of fantastic hikes and paddles around the area, with dozens of bald eagles spotted and the beginnings of the Sockeye salmon run.