Let’s get the money shot right up front. It’s from Matt’s camera. Liz, our captain and guide, steered our boat
near a mother humpback and her calf. I
was following the calf, who appeared to venture too far for Mom’s liking. She made a demonstrative call for her charge
to get back within an acceptable distance.
We also witnessed an activity unique to these humpbacks
called a bubble net feeding group. A
group of whales, we estimate about twenty, work together to capture more
fish. They get below a school of halibut
or some other fish species and on a pre arranged signal they swim in a large
circle while blowing air out of their blow holes creating a huge column of
bubbles. This gathers the fish into
rising column of air. On another signal
the group of whales all surface together and open their mouths taking in as
much as 12,000 gallons of water and fish.
Using their two ton tongues they push the fish up to the roof of their
mouth and the water is filtered through their baleen. In a half hours time we watched this
collective feed itself four times, eating an estimated 500 hundred thousand
pounds of fish.
While in Juneau one of the must stops is the Mendenhall glacier. We hiked down a trail to a massive waterfall. The hike was much shorter 100 years ago. Glad we were here to enjoy it. Several of the trails around the glacier are very “bear active” this time of year. Jesse recorded some video of a cub climbing a tree but out bandwidth is a bit thin to share.
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