boat tour to wildlife & glaciers

I can now die a happy woman!

The boat trip was fantastic in every way. (Major Marine 8.5 hour tour on Orca Song from Seward to the Northwestern Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park) We saw SO MUCH wildlife, including several rare sightings & behaviors. 

Here is the first of 3 sea otters we saw. 

This is the sea cave & rocks where we got very close to see sea stars & jelly fish - many, many of each. 

A dozen Dall's porpoises swam & played near our boat for a while. They swam so fast that they were hard to photograph, but we saw each one many times. This group of Stellar's sea lions is typical of what one sees in Alaska, that is no babies, just a group of adults hauled up on shore.  

Though humpback whales are often seen in this area, they are mostly seen alone or perhaps a mom & baby. Not only did we see a whole pod, we saw them engage in what is called bubble net feeding. Many pods around the world do not engage in this type of feeding. There are several groups near Juneau which have hunted this way since modern man has been observing them, but it has only been seen in this area in the last 5 years. It was unbelievably cool to see & understand it. The group would swim around & blow for a while, then the birds would all land in the same spot indicating that the whales were forming up a bubble net, then the whales would all surface close together at the same time. This repeated a half a dozen times while we were there - coolest wildlife observation ever for me. Here's what I captured in 3 cycles of swimming & then the bubble net feeding; in each cycle, there are 2 pics of swimming then 2 pics of bubble net feeding. (A pretty good detailed description of this is found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble-net_feeding)

The next thing we saw is seen by all the tour boats here, but it is unique in Alaska. This is the only Stellar's sea lion rookery (where babies are born & raised) in AK. Scientists counted 60 pups here this season. The Stellar's sea lions were hunted almost to extinction when the Russians were here, but they are now making a comeback. Later, in another location, we saw one swimming around hunting, which is not very common. 

The entrance to Northwestern Lagoon is magical. 

As we approached the first of 4 glaciers here, we saw many ice flows with harbor seals on them. They are actually warmer on the ice than in the water. 

The Northwestern Glacier is the main event here. The left side is 400-500' high, & the right side is 2,000' high; the boat had to stay 1/4 mile away in case a big area calved at once. Everyone on the boat stayed very quiet as the noise is a big part of experiencing a glacier calve; it begins with a crackling inside, then a rumbling like thunder as the ice face tumbles down into the sea - impossible to capture here just how cool it is to witness this. 

As we prepared to leave, the crew scooped up a chunk of glacier ice for us to pass around. 

Then it was off to a cliff with numerous waterfalls. We got so close at one point that a passenger held his coffee cup out over the railing & got a cupful of snowmelt!

After all of that, we found another pod of humpbacks on our return to port. One breached to about 3/4 out of the water, but I only caught a smaller breach, some spouts, some swimming, & some flukes. 

We watched many of these animals, especially the whales & porpoises for quite a while. These are less than 1/4 of the pics I took, & I didn't photograph everything that was photo-worthy. 

One of the crew made a list of all of the animals & where we saw them on a map - very cool memory. A note there shows 3 orcas spotted off the map (off of our planned route); these were spotted very briefly at a distance, & I missed them. 

We saw many bald eagles including a nest with one adult on it & another in a treetop nearby. Another bald eagle was "swimming" (very rare); he dove down & caught a fish & swam with the fish to shore, because he was now too heavy to lift off of the water to fly. We saw many, many puffins, both horned & tufted, along with a rare black oyster catcher. With only a cell phone, I didn't bother to photograph any of these. Also, we saw many other species of birds, but I;m not interested enough to have recorded these.

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Wildlife sightings

--> --> today on boat tour:     sea otters - 3        many bald eagles    

many sea stars & jelly fish        Dall's porpoise - ~12

North Pacific Humpback whales - 2 pods of ~ 12 each

Stellar's sea lions - 100+ including 60 pups (counted by scientists)

puffins, horned & tufted - many            black oyster catcher - 1 (rare)

many harbor seals

--> --> yesterday: 2+ trumpeter swans (Forgot to post this yesterday...the pair was together in tall grass, no doubt guarding cygnets.)

--> --> trip total so far: 

    black bears - 4          deer - 2                grizzlies - 1            moose - 6

    stone sheep - 8        elk - 1                   caribou - 15            bison - 42    

    Dall sheep - 11        porcupines -1         mountain goats - 1

    trumpeter swans - 7+