Whales Doing Whale Things

–by Alma

I’m down below reading my book when Arlo looks down the companionway and yells, “Whales doing whale things!” I run up on deck, and true enough, I see spouts all around us. They’re breaching and then diving deep down, showing us their flukes, each with a distinct pattern of white and black on the underside. Suddenly we see one launch itself straight up, mouth opening around a school of fish.

Like the last two summers here in Alaska, the three weeks that we’ve spent sailing south from Petersburg have been full of wildlife. Despite the fact that we are on a boat, we’ve seen all sorts of fascinating land animals. One day we were rowing ashore when my dad looked up and said, “that’s some sort of canine.” Just a few yards from the beach, we looked up only to realize that it was lupine. We watched the wolf for about five minutes as it walked along the shore watching us. At one point it sat down, observing us as we were it. Eventually we landed the dingy, and it ran up into the woods. Ashore, we saw many lines of tracks running up and down the beach in the hard packed sand.

Each paw print measured five inches long, prompting us to remind each other that the bear spray we all carried worked on wolves too, should the need arise.

In addition to the wolf, we have seen bears looking for mussels along the rocky shores, we’ve seen deer, and then there was an odd one. We were walking along the beach at coronation island when we heard the most bizarre noise. It was a combination of a bark, a warbled screech, and a donkey braying, if you can imagine what that might sound like. We came to a little stream and looked up it to see two birds that resembled oversize Great Blue Herons. When they saw us they went up into the woods, continuing to make their strange call. I had never realized that there was an animal capable of making a sound like that, but there they were—Sandhill Cranes!

In addition to the land animals, we have of course seen many sea mammals. There have been otters carrying babies, Dahl’s porpoises playing under our bow, and seals that pop their heads up as we row by, as well as the magnificent whales. Despite the hundreds of whales we have seen over the years, we can still get blown away when we see them. They breach, sometimes propelling their entire body out of the water and landing in a huge splash.

The whales also work together to bubble net and pull the schools of fish tighter and tighter until they shoot straight up right in the middle, mouths open to catch the fish only to sink back down and do it again.

Here in Alaska it seems like if you just watch in any direction for long enough you’ll see something that you never could have guessed you would see. We have no idea what we’ll see as we head down through British Columbia to Puget Sound, but we expect it will be spectacular!

We’ll leave you with this awesome video Arlo took. Enjoy!