Low clouds blanketed Chatham Straight at dawn as National Geographic Sea Bird motored its way south through calm waters. The captain dropped anchor in a small sheltered bay on Chichagof Island near a well-known salmon stream, and after breakfast, guests were able to take a shore excursion looking for brown bears. As our group made its way towards a small grassy knob in the bay, our efforts were rewarded with stunning views of multiple brown bears feeding on salmon in a small river that flowed down a waterfall onto a rocky, shallow shelf. The shallowness of the water and the bottleneck of the waterfall made it easy for the bears to have their fill of fish.
After lunch aboard National Geographic Sea Bird, we continued cruising south through Chatham Straight where we encountered a group of eight humpback whales bubblenet feeding. Bubblenet feeding is a collaborative feeding behavior—known to happen with only a very small number of whales in the world—where one whale casts a net of bubbles from its blowhole, while other whales herd a group of small fish into the net. The whales then lunge in unison to the surface, trapping the fish against the surface of the water and leaving no escape—but down the throats of the whales.
The timing of our encounter with the bubblenet feeding humpbacks could not have been better, as Dr. Andy Szabo of the Alaska Whale Foundation joined us in the evening for an engaging presentation into his research on the humpback whales of Southeast Alaska. Dr. Szabo departed to the sound of applause—a hero heading back into the breach of more research.
