We left Monckton Inlet this morning just after 9am and headed south in Principe Channel in much nicer conditions than yesterday.
Last year when we took this same route home, we saw SO many humpbacks bubblenet feeding at the southern tip of Pitt Island (right there where the red/orange marker is) so we were hopeful there might be some whales in the area.
Lucky for us, we soon spotted spouts ahead, and after grabbing the binocs and getting eyes full of bubblenet-feeding humpbacks, we motored on to get closer. As we neared, not far from the group of humpbacks was a dorsal fin that didn’t match the others, off to the side. I didn’t get very good photos of it, but it was about the size of a minke whale, and the fin matches, so likely a lone minke.
We spent a couple hours watching and photographing the humpbacks, and getting a whole lot of identifications from Happy Whale. I’ll post the bubblenet shots first, then all the flukes (with IDs and links to their Happy Whale pages) for whoever wants to join me in nerding out on that part.
I only got the top of this fluke so can’t do the quick ID, but will submit it to Happy Whale anyway…it’s so recognizable and bound to be able to be identified:
Melissa Lynn with a couple humpbacks:
What a show!
Here are the flukes with IDs:
Snowtip and Winter, diving together (appropriate):
So we got solid IDs on ten whales, but there were a handful more (including some young ones/calves) that I just never got a good fluke shot of.
Oh, and I noticed these little birds flying a couple circles around Airship, so I did my best to snap a couple photos so I could identify them…blurry from the superfast movement, but I got ’em: black turnstones! They’re native to the west coast of North America, and breed only in Alaska. If I hadn’t seen them in flight, I never would have even looked them up (sorry little birds) because without their outstretched wings they’re just kinda boring-looking brownish wading birds.
Such a fun morning!
Eventually we motored around the corner and dropped the hook in Saycuritay Cove.
I stayed on Airship and sorted through the gazillions of photos I took, while Kevin and Russ and Missie went out fishing. The bubblenet feeding continued into the late afternoon, and the fishing was a success.
Kevin managed to take a bunch of short video clips with his iPhone while he was fishing (in between catching fish!), and then compiled them together into this crazy example of what it was like for him fishing alongside the whales! (Don’t worry moms, he was mostly zoomed in.)
Missie and Russ joined us for dinner on Airship, and we all had a fun evening catching up!