Airship | Cape Fanshaw Bubblenet Feeding, Windham Bay

Our cruise yesterday from Thomas Bay to Windham Bay was whale-filled, including another (or the same?) group bubblenet feeding right around Cape Fanshaw.

I took photos of a few more flukes to identify…uploaded to happywhale.com and will add captions once I have names. (Thanks to Andrea for turning me onto this site…I wish I’d have been doing this every year up here!)

This one was identified as humpback whale Launaana aka Norio, SEAK-2307, male, first sighting June 2007 in Alaska:

This one was identified as humpback whale Polka (Juneau), SEAK-2681, female, first sighting July 2019 in Alaska:

This one was identified as humpback whale unnamed, SEAK-5290, male, first sighting June 2004 in British Columbia:

Another sighting of humpback Boreophausia (SEAK-1388, sex unknown, earliest sighting August 2004 in SE Alaska):

This one is a male called Phalacrocorax, SEAK-0567, first seen in Nayarit, Mexico in May, 2989:

   

About an hour further north near Point Walpole, just south of Hobart Bay, we started seeing MANY humpbacks ahead (maybe 20-something of them). The water was flat so they weren’t hard to spot…and they were all around us, even breaching, tail- and fin-slapping in the distance. Didn’t take many photos because we were mostly too far away (and are not in any shortage of whale photos lately).

The more north we went, the flatter and calmer the conditions.

Super flat Stephens Passage

Here are a few aerials Kevin took from our anchorage — right around low tide:

And here’s an overview video that Kevin made of the anchorage and surrounding area:

Next stop: Ford’s Terror! (But high tide isn’t until right around 6pm, so we won’t be entering until sometime after that = nice leisurely morning in Windham Bay.)