Whales, puffins, sea-otter, sea lions, orca & eagles!

This last week has been amazing - each day filled with superb encounters with animals, and fabulous learnings from Art Wolfe & Gavriel Jecan, both with huge experience photographing wildlife.

We are six people, two couples, my cabin mate and me – five of us are photographers. In addition we have a crew of four – Geoff our Captain, his wife Debbie (a marvellous chef with immense knowledge of this area), and Bree and Ben, a young couple gaining experience and funds before they travel the world.

So, where to begin? We experienced so much in a very short time, and saw many animals - but the most amazing were mighty Humpback whales (North Pacific form).

Just this morning we were all up and about at around 7am (we’re all early risers), having cups of tea and coffee. Four of us were chatting in the lounge, glancing out through the Alaskan Story’s large windows, commenting on how still & glassy the water was at our anchorage in Neka Bay, near the small town of Hoonah.Whales

We were the only boat there, and other than a small boat dropping crab pots early the previous evening, there were none visible for miles. The sky was clearing a little and we were surrounded by high mountains.

We watched salmon leaping out of the water, creating ripples in the glassy surface. One of us said something like “wouldn’t it be amazing to see a whale breach, just outside this window?” Having seen multiple whales breaching the day before (more on this later), we remained focused on trying to see more orca and more eagles – both had been a little scarce.

Then Kevin said that he thought he’d seen whales blows on the other side of the bay – yes indeed, and it appeared to be humpback rather than orca, but only one. Still, always worth checking out.

Captain Geoff was ready to go, and his wife Debbie was happy to delay putting the muffins in the oven. So we checked camera batteries and cards, and were soon out on the bow. The humpback was coming closer, and Art was keen to have the boat positioned so that we could photograph the whale in shaded water. It was moving slowly across our bow – Geoff positioned the boat beautifully so that we could all see the whale (we spend lots of time walking from one side of the boat to the other, down the sides, out the back – wherever we have the best vantage point). It was moving quietly, blowing and then sliding below the surface, coming to the surface again and blowing.

Just mesmerising – a perfect way to start our last full day out in the Glacier Bay area.

Every so often whales that have been feeding will show their tail and dive deep into the water. It’s then a waiting & guessing game to see where they’ll surface. This one slid quietly beneath the surface without showing its tail, but it clearly was going deeper than it had before.

Suddenly and silently it burst from the water in a perfect breach. It happened to be right in front of me, far enough away to capture it fully in my camera, at least I was pretty sure that I’d framed it well. But this is a case of one finger on focus & the other on the shutter, and let it rip! And with the other photographers doing the same, it was an amazing moment to witness as it finally crashed back on to the sea.

I say “on to” rather than “into” because this is exactly what they do – they land on the water with their full body length horizontal – it’s a very loud slap of 36 tonnes of whale hitting the water hard.  Photos are at elanezphotography.com .

Five or six seconds later it burst from the water again, and again, and again – it breached 6 times in total, something I’ve heard about but never seen before. It then started “tail slapping” where the whale dives to show its tail and then slaps it hard against the ocean surface. I lost count of the number of tail slaps, but this was clearly a serial breacher.

And this was all before breakfast!