What a Fluke!

When we originally planned our Alaska vacation, we had scheduled a day trip to see bears on Admiralty Island while we were in Juneau.  The weather (and the bears) were uncooperative so we ended up canceling and instead scheduled a whale watching and wildlife excursion.  That was definitely the right call.

Our trip left from Auke Bay about a 20 minute drive from downtown and we headed north into the inside passage. Captain Chris and Naturalist Troy led us on a four hour journey where we saw about 8 or 9 different humpback whales, including a mother and her calf swimming side by side.  Many of the whales return year after year, dividing their time between Alaska and Hawaii.  How do they know this?  The coloring of a whale's tail -- its fluke -- is unique to each whale, much like a fingerprint. They have photographic evidence of these same whales returning each summer.

There's a registry that scientists use to study the whales and they even give them names.  The two returnees we know we saw by their flukes were Sasha and Flame.  Flame was the mother with her calf.  In addition to all of the whales, we also saw Steller sea lions and harbor seals.  And eagles of course.  Lots of eagles and other sea birds.

Steller sea lions

Bald eagle

Harbor seals

We've done a few other whale watching tours, but this will likely be our last as it was so incredible to see so many whales that it would be difficult to replicate.  We even saw two different breaches where the whales came completely out of the water.  Humpbacks don't often do this, especially in Alaska, and to see two in the same trip was amazing.  Even Chris and Troy were awed and impressed as that's something they don't normally see and they do this for a living.  Breaches are so unexpected and so sudden that we were not able to get any pictures, but that won't diminish our memories of the experience.