This was the first Prince William Sound trip for me, but I'll get a few more later on. We had a few days of rain, but also some sun, and the snow was glistening around on the peaks. Seward is beautiful, and it was nice when we were leaving.
When we went to Tiger Glacier, we spotted a Black Bear climbing across the glacier, which was amazing. I hope it made it back all right.
Another view of the crevasses of Tiger Glacier
Then on the first evening, we had a bunch of humpback whales bubblenetting! In the past it was tricky to find them, but this week they were out in force.
They came up a few times pretty close.
The next day we found either the same group or another group, and this time we had the hydrophone out to listen to the call, and that was really cool.
That evening we did a skiff tour up a river and found a Brown Bear and cubs
and a few Merganser ducklings swimming up the river
Then I did a skiff tour and found a few humpbacks out and about lunge feeding.
They were moving all over the place and came quite close a few times.
Here you can see the tubercles on the snout
Usually in pairs, lunging together. Here you can see the water coming out of the side of the mouth. They lunge and get a big mouthful of water and then it strains out over the side of the mouth.
At one point they came right at the skiff and went under it. this is the front view of the nose
We went to Meares Glacier and it had advanced a bit since last year. Its killing trees and running them over.
We found a small whale that eventually we identified as a Minke whale, but at first it was porpoiseing, which is like half jumping out, and making a big splash, but moving very fast. We couldn't figure out the species for a long time, but in this photo you can see the two blow holes, so its not a dolphin or toothed whale.
No comments:
Post a Comment