Admiralty Island and Pavlof Harbor
As cocktail hour kicked off in the lounge, just off the port bow, one humpback whale emitted a series of bubbles in a clock-wise motion, forming a net around a school of herring. Another whale, in this cooperative of 11 humpbacks, made a vocalization, its powerful scream scaring the fish. The combination of the bubble net and scream forced the herring into a tight ball, and dinner was served. The vocal humpback stopped its screaming, and the entire group lunged in unison through the fish school. Diving down, and then surfacing head first, with mouths agape, the humpbacks feasted on their stunned prey. Their throat pleats expand out three to four times their original size, while their mouths could hold up to 500 gallons of water and fish. Once they caught the fish in their massive mouths, they used their humongous tongues to force the water out through their baleen, trapping the herring here in its hairy fringes. They then swept their tongues back across the baleen, forcing the prey back into their throats through an opening approximately the size of a grapefruit. A magnificent sight for us to witness, not just once, but multiple times as the cooperative feeding recurred at approximately 2-minute intervals.
After some time, we went down to our own feeding, with a slightly more expansive menu, in slightly smaller portions than our baleen friends. As dinner ended, the calf traveling with this group breached, calling us back out on deck. A rainbow shone in the distance and the late evening sun, dispersed by scattered clouds, reflected off the black Alaskan waters. It’s a peaceful ending to a day that began with transient Orcas, brought us a brown bear sow and her two cubs in the afternoon and culminated in the early evening show of 11 humpbacks simultaneously breaking through the water’s surface in one massive lunge upwards.
As cocktail hour kicked off in the lounge, just off the port bow, one humpback whale emitted a series of bubbles in a clock-wise motion, forming a net around a school of herring. Another whale, in this cooperative of 11 humpbacks, made a vocalization, its powerful scream scaring the fish. The combination of the bubble net and scream forced the herring into a tight ball, and dinner was served. The vocal humpback stopped its screaming, and the entire group lunged in unison through the fish school. Diving down, and then surfacing head first, with mouths agape, the humpbacks feasted on their stunned prey. Their throat pleats expand out three to four times their original size, while their mouths could hold up to 500 gallons of water and fish. Once they caught the fish in their massive mouths, they used their humongous tongues to force the water out through their baleen, trapping the herring here in its hairy fringes. They then swept their tongues back across the baleen, forcing the prey back into their throats through an opening approximately the size of a grapefruit. A magnificent sight for us to witness, not just once, but multiple times as the cooperative feeding recurred at approximately 2-minute intervals.
After some time, we went down to our own feeding, with a slightly more expansive menu, in slightly smaller portions than our baleen friends. As dinner ended, the calf traveling with this group breached, calling us back out on deck. A rainbow shone in the distance and the late evening sun, dispersed by scattered clouds, reflected off the black Alaskan waters. It’s a peaceful ending to a day that began with transient Orcas, brought us a brown bear sow and her two cubs in the afternoon and culminated in the early evening show of 11 humpbacks simultaneously breaking through the water’s surface in one massive lunge upwards.
