Day 49 Watching the Whales

Juneau is the capital of Alaska. Like many Alaskan towns it is only accessible by plane or ferry. If you drive out of town for 7 miles, you will reach a barrier and a sign which reads ‘End of the Road’.

 The town is famous for the Birdman of Alcatraz, the Red Dog Saloon, and, of course, Sarah Pallin. Our ship docked close to town, and we would happily have spent a few hours wandering around the many tourist shops and attractions.

But we had booked what appeared to be an exorbitantly overpriced Princess trip to watch the whales.

On average it rains for 220 days in Juneau. Being so early in the season, we were fortunate indeed to climb onto a coach in sunshine. The coach took us the 5 miles to our ‘whale watching’ vessel. I had expected to embark a chilly and exposed water craft overcrowded with camera yielding passengers. The reality was far better. We found ourselves on a 2 storey, spacious, glass protected catamaran. There were only about 50 of us onboard a vessel designed to hold 250. With free tea and coffee and generous use off binoculars, we set off comfortably into Auk Bay.

The opitical zoom on my medium priced Fuji camera reaches a maximum of 18x. This was barely sufficient for the next 3 hours, but, thanks to my cheap portable bendy mini tripod (which I would recommend as a purchase), I did manage to focus a few photos on the experience which followed.

A Bald Eagle

Sea Lions

And now for the whales....

Hump Back Whales are longer in size  than a coach. The ones we saw spend their winters in Hawaii giving birth to young, then head off to Alaskan feeding grounds for the summer. 

The first indication of their presence is a misty spout, as the whales exhale air and water in their approach to the surface. The boat then goes silent and we wait. A whale can dive for over 10 minutes and we have no idea where it will resurface.

Someone points to movement.

A dark shape appears on the surface of the water. We snap our cameras and hope we have caught the scene.

The shape turns into a fin.

The fin turns into a tail.

The whale descends into the depths and the cycle starts again.

Conservation rules prevent us from watching the same whale for too long, so we move on every 30 minutes. The time passes extremely quickly.

Unmissable!