Juneau Whale Watch post 13 of 16
July 1, 2018
This was one of the more anticipated excursions during our cruise. We had hoped to see bubble netting, which is a hunting technique in the whale world. Them hunting fish, not us hunting them. It is a real thing... https://www.alaskawhalefoundation.org/research-1/ . Sadly, we were too early in the season for this to be part of our experience. Sorry, no humpbacks, no insurance-company ad-worthy frolicking to see...
We ended up on a boat with a guide and a captain, both of whom were topnotch, and a small group of sightseers... I believe there were ten of us onboard.
There was a big difference between this excursion and a fishing charter I went on with James many years ago. He had won the trip at age ten or so at a trout pond set up in the Lansing Center at an outdoor expo in the spring. So later in the summer, we went to Grand Haven and took off with the captain into Lake Michigan. It was a great trip, and yes he caught fish, but I noticed a curious practice...
When one charter boat would find a school, it would go radio silent. That's how our skipper found fish (in part, he also had sonar and fisherman chops). But when he noted the "Billy Bob" had gone silent, he headed for that colleague's vessel.
In Juneau, the captains were all collaborative. When one sighted a whale, boom! They broadcast immediately what they'd seen, and where. How cool is that.
Anyway, here's a rapid-shot sequence of a sighting:
I had inadvertently set my camera on manual, so I had to do some serious Lightroom post production on these shots. Please pardon my ineptitude.
Here's another sequence I creatively named "Whale B":
These three frames were shot in the space of a few seconds.
Whale sighting is not unlike catching a glacier calving, in that you hear something (the blow) and then, if you're lucky, you can spot it, and know where to look to see the actual critter. It's the blow to which my attention next turned:
In that shot (above) I was able to catch the creator of all that mist. Below is another lucky shot, in that the blow is backlit by a patch of sunlight on the shore, and of course, again, there's the whale:
And finally, last in this sub-series, a rare double, backed by the presence of another excursion boat. The gulls are exclamation points:
Speaking of the boats, I call this shot "Why Whales Dive":
And, just to finish the entire watch series, a couple more frames, each of which could be titled, "The End":
This was one of the more anticipated excursions during our cruise. We had hoped to see bubble netting, which is a hunting technique in the whale world. Them hunting fish, not us hunting them. It is a real thing... https://www.alaskawhalefoundation.org/research-1/ . Sadly, we were too early in the season for this to be part of our experience. Sorry, no humpbacks, no insurance-company ad-worthy frolicking to see...
We ended up on a boat with a guide and a captain, both of whom were topnotch, and a small group of sightseers... I believe there were ten of us onboard.
There was a big difference between this excursion and a fishing charter I went on with James many years ago. He had won the trip at age ten or so at a trout pond set up in the Lansing Center at an outdoor expo in the spring. So later in the summer, we went to Grand Haven and took off with the captain into Lake Michigan. It was a great trip, and yes he caught fish, but I noticed a curious practice...
When one charter boat would find a school, it would go radio silent. That's how our skipper found fish (in part, he also had sonar and fisherman chops). But when he noted the "Billy Bob" had gone silent, he headed for that colleague's vessel.
In Juneau, the captains were all collaborative. When one sighted a whale, boom! They broadcast immediately what they'd seen, and where. How cool is that.
Anyway, here's a rapid-shot sequence of a sighting:
I had inadvertently set my camera on manual, so I had to do some serious Lightroom post production on these shots. Please pardon my ineptitude.
Here's another sequence I creatively named "Whale B":
Whale sighting is not unlike catching a glacier calving, in that you hear something (the blow) and then, if you're lucky, you can spot it, and know where to look to see the actual critter. It's the blow to which my attention next turned:
In that shot (above) I was able to catch the creator of all that mist. Below is another lucky shot, in that the blow is backlit by a patch of sunlight on the shore, and of course, again, there's the whale:
And finally, last in this sub-series, a rare double, backed by the presence of another excursion boat. The gulls are exclamation points:
Speaking of the boats, I call this shot "Why Whales Dive":
And, just to finish the entire watch series, a couple more frames, each of which could be titled, "The End":
Comments