Overland in the Americas: Humpback Heaven

Today we went on a whale watching trip in Frederick Sound near Petersburg in SE Alaska and we were both completely blown away, it has been the best part of the trip and very possibly our lives to date. We saw tens of humpback whales all around us out of a group of a hundred or so in the area, but this was not the amazing part, the mind blowing thing was we saw all the possible behaviours displayed. I wish I could write this in a way that doesn't sound smug but I think its impossible. We saw the bubble netting behaviour three or four times where the whales work together to catch the herring, one blows bubbles from underneath while the others come together at the surface, emerging like huge mussels to gulp down the herring. Having been treated to this display we were over the moon, but the whales had not finished..........We started to follow another group of 5-7 whales all travelling along in a line, keeping a distance of a few hundred metres, then suddenly 3 of them "breached" flying into the air and landing to produce huge splashes that sounded like explosions. A few more breaches and Tail flips followed, the tail flips were amazing 2 of the whales flung themselves out of the water in a somersault starting with the tail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The last behaviour was fin (15ft long) slapping which one of the perhaps less athletic whales carried out throughout the display. It looked like a choreographed display that could be set to music, most probably the 1812 overture (looking on youtube I am saddened to see that this has yet to be done).

But let me rewind a minute, the first close encounter with the whales had an unreal quality to it and after they had passed by I was literally trembling (I nearly had a double rainbow moment). Scott, our guide, had dropped the hydrophone in the water, We had seen the whales dive a couple of hundred metres away on several sides of us. The cabin filled with the whale noises, so unbelievably varied, not just the whale "song" but also strange grunts and groans (think sealion, pig and formula 1 cars altogether). The noise then grew incredibly intense making the speakers vibrate with feedback and I asked Scott why it was so loud just as two whales surfaced just by Fiona's side (at which point she nearly fell out of the boat with surprise) it was crazy, there were other whales all around.

They were busy fishing for herring which we could see from the boat sonar were in a ball a couple of hundred feet below us. A couple of them sounded like elephant trumpets when they surfaced and expelled air, obviously having held their breath a bit longer they were keen to get rid of it. Sometimes we could hear them blowing from further away than we could see them.

Basically it was hard to describe in words but I hope you get some idea..............................