{"id":795,"date":"2026-05-22T03:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T03:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/?p=795"},"modified":"2026-05-22T03:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T03:11:16","slug":"usa-2024-part-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/usa-2024-part-32\/","title":{"rendered":"USA Part 32 – The first whale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t spotting any wildlife, the coastal scenery was beautiful (shades of green, brown, grey, white, blue).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From inside<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Railings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


\u201cAnd we have a Dall\u2019s porpoise near our boat. They are really fast. They can swim at 35 miles per hour, while we are currently going at 25.\u201d
We all stepped out onto the deck again.\u00a0
\u201cThere\u2019s just one, it seems like.\u201d
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\u2019d just have a moment to view it.\u00a0
\u201cThey do sometimes like to play around the boat. We\u2019ll see if this one wants to play or not.\u201d
The captain waited a few minutes, but there was no sign of it again.
\u201cIt\u2019s probably gone in search of food. But we may see them again later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 9:30 am, Rajesh dozed off in his seat. 
\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little while later, the captain said that there\u2019s a whale in our neighbourhood on the starboard (right side). He brought up the topic of perspectives again. \u201cWhen a humpback whale comes up to the surface, you are only seeing one-third of the animal’s body. It\u2019s very similar to you and me when we swim, we don\u2019t bring our whole body out.\u201d
As per the information notice I saw earlier, a humpback<\/strong> whale<\/strong> can be around 60 feet long.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Info on whales in the boat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


He went on to describe these whales – they have something called \u2018baleen<\/strong>\u2019, which is like teeth but more of a filtering mechanism; it\u2019s like plates with hairs on the end of them; they filter the water to get small bait fish, which is their food.\u00a0
\u201cWe 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.\u201d
We were standing on the starboard side of the boat, but the captain said, \u201cI\u00a0 still think it might come up on the port side after swimming under our boat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Three things you see<\/strong>: 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\u2019d see the flip of the tail.\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh yeah – look out at 11 o’clock.\u201d 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.
\u201cOh, look at that,\u201d the captain said. And then I discovered it wasn\u2019t the place I was looking at, but further ahead. We saw a part of its body coming above the water, and the captain went, \u201cHere comes the tail, here it comes. Wow.\u201d
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.\u00a0
\u201cThe underside of the humpback whale\u2019s tail is unique – it\u2019s like fingerprints for humans. And we can identify the whale using it. My staff says that the one we saw was\u2026\u201d
I couldn\u2019t catch the name, but it sounded like Morgan something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was my first whale sighting. Don\u2019t expect to see their face – don\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The captain on top viewing the seas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was 10 am, and people were crowded on the port side of the boat. The captain was describing the orca<\/strong> – killer<\/strong> whales<\/strong>. Seemed like he had spotted something.\u00a0
\u201cThere are 3 ecotypes of the killer whale in Alaska – resident<\/strong>, transient<\/strong> and offshore<\/strong>. There are differences in their appearance and even in their diet. Like the offshore is known to feed on sharks.\u201d
And a little while later, we could see a fin sticking straight up above the water.
\u201cThis 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.\u201d
We saw a couple of fins pop above the water – there was more than one killer whale out there.
\u201cLet\u2019s just keep watching them.\u201d
He said that we weren\u2019t even halfway through our trip yet, and we had already come across a bunch of whales.\u00a0
\u201cOh wow, they\u2019ve moved further away. Everybody, come over to the port side to get some more views.\u201d
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\u2019t 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\u2019s why their name is more like killer of whales<\/em><\/strong>; 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.
\u201cWe saw the dall\u2019s porpoises earlier, and they may have been avoiding the killer whales.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few people pointed to the boat’s rear end, thinking those were also whales. But the staff nearby clarified, \u201cSome birds, when they expand their wings, will also look like a fin.\u201d The staff was guiding people on where to look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those wanting to read about the whales:
https:\/\/www.fisheries.noaa.gov\/species\/killer-whale\/overview<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travelogue","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}