I went all over the boat to check out all the decks and viewing areas. There was something charming about being in a boat in the waters – I felt that when going out with my colleague on his boat, and felt the same over here in this much larger cruise boat as I watched us moving further away from land. Even when you aren’t spotting any wildlife, the coastal scenery was beautiful (shades of green, brown, grey, white, blue).
“And we have a Dall’s porpoise near our boat. They are really fast. They can swim at 35 miles per hour, while we are currently going at 25.”
We all stepped out onto the deck again.
“There’s just one, it seems like.”
This one was hard to get a clear glimpse of because it was like a dolphin popping to the surface, then diving back under. So you’d just have a moment to view it.
“They do sometimes like to play around the boat. We’ll see if this one wants to play or not.”
The captain waited a few minutes, but there was no sign of it again.
“It’s probably gone in search of food. But we may see them again later.”
Around 9:30 am, Rajesh dozed off in his seat.
“We are heading into Aialak Bay. The name Aialak means dangerous or eerie. Dangerous because there are 3 water currents that converge here, and so the sea is confused at this point. The natives used a kayak to travel here.”
A little while later, the captain said that there’s a whale in our neighbourhood on the starboard (right side). He brought up the topic of perspectives again. “When a humpback whale comes up to the surface, you are only seeing one-third of the animal’s body. It’s very similar to you and me when we swim, we don’t bring our whole body out.”
As per the information notice I saw earlier, a humpback whale can be around 60 feet long.
He went on to describe these whales – they have something called ‘baleen’, which is like teeth but more of a filtering mechanism; it’s like plates with hairs on the end of them; they filter the water to get small bait fish, which is their food.
“We need to look all around the boat. You know what we are looking for – that spout, the puff of smoke which rises above the surface of the water.”
We were standing on the starboard side of the boat, but the captain said, “I still think it might come up on the port side after swimming under our boat.”
Three things you see: the spout, which I first thought was the whale blowing water out, but it’s actually the whale breathing out; and when the warm air from the whale meets the cold air outside, condensation occurs, leading to the formation of small droplets. Second, you see a part of the body, and finally, you’d see the flip of the tail.
“Oh yeah – look out at 11 o’clock.” I think the caption saw a spout.
I had focused my phone cam on a patch of water that seemed to be a different colour.
“Oh, look at that,” the captain said. And then I discovered it wasn’t the place I was looking at, but further ahead. We saw a part of its body coming above the water, and the captain went, “Here comes the tail, here it comes. Wow.”
We could clearly see the underside of the tail, which was mostly black, but had a patch of white – later read that this is a distinct sign of a humpback whale. We were at some distance from the whale, but it was still visible to the human eye – the binoculars, of course, gave you a sharper and closer look – but one challenge is that the field of vision is limited in binoculars; so you have to be focused on the right spot, else you would miss them.
“The underside of the humpback whale’s tail is unique – it’s like fingerprints for humans. And we can identify the whale using it. My staff says that the one we saw was…”
I couldn’t catch the name, but it sounded like Morgan something.
That was my first whale sighting. Don’t expect to see their face – don’t think many whales will be jumping out of the water for us to get a glimpse of that!
When I went down to the second-level deck, a staff member asked me if she could borrow my binoculars for a while. She went around looking at the seas and then returned it to me. The staff were probably assisting the captain by letting him know if they spotted anything. In this case, it was likely a whale.
It was 10 am, and people were crowded on the port side of the boat. The captain was describing the orca – killer whales. Seemed like he had spotted something.
“There are 3 ecotypes of the killer whale in Alaska – resident, transient and offshore. There are differences in their appearance and even in their diet. Like the offshore is known to feed on sharks.”
And a little while later, we could see a fin sticking straight up above the water.
“This is such a cool animal. The tall dorsal fin is a male. You will see their tail fin first. Their dorsal fin is about 5 feet.”
We saw a couple of fins pop above the water – there was more than one killer whale out there.
“Let’s just keep watching them.”
He said that we weren’t even halfway through our trip yet, and we had already come across a bunch of whales.
“Oh wow, they’ve moved further away. Everybody, come over to the port side to get some more views.”
We could see the fins, and a part of their upper body came above the water for a second, then went below multiple times. Orcas actually belong to the dolphin family – we couldn’t see their full body, but if you see snaps, the black and white colour will remind you of dolphins. But these even eat whales, and that’s why their name is more like killer of whales; they are apex predators (no predator above them!) As per the length chart pasted in the cabin, these were only about 20 feet in length, a lot smaller than the humpback whales.
“We saw the dall’s porpoises earlier, and they may have been avoiding the killer whales.”
A few people pointed to the boat’s rear end, thinking those were also whales. But the staff nearby clarified, “Some birds, when they expand their wings, will also look like a fin.” The staff was guiding people on where to look.
For those wanting to read about the whales:
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/killer-whale/overview