July 8-9 –Tyndall Cove; Out of Glacier Bay to Inian Cove
On July 8, our last night in
Glacier Bay, the weather was variable depending on which window you looked out
– sun to port, rain to starboard, clouds behind us and at some points 22 knots
of wind. We saw it all before anchoring in Tyndall
Cove in Geike Inlet, about 19
miles northwest of Bartlett Cove, and then left early the next morning to catch
the tidal current on the way out of Glacier Bay National Park, after lunching
at the lodge.
Within an hour of leaving Glacier Bay, just as we were rounding Point Carolus near the shallows, we were surrounded by humpbacks ... feeding AND breaching!
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| An amazing breach! |
Roland put the boat in neutral as
we all pulled out cameras to photograph the show. They must have been excited
to see us ... the whales were jumping for joy! In whale parlance, that’s called
breaching ... and we saw all kinds of other funny whale behaviors as well.
It’s hard to comprehend how an
animal that averages 50 feet in length, 40 tons in weight, and only swims 4-5
knots, can propel itself entirely out of water.
We were lucky there were so many
whales, and so many of them were breaching ... there is no signal to watch for
as a clue that a whale is going to breach until it basically shoots out of the
water, so you have to be on your toes to actually catch them in the act for a
photograph.
But ... in the event you miss
catching a shot of the breach ...the amount of water that’s displaced when they
land is a spectacular sight to behold as well.
Beyond breaching, we also saw them
spyhop, pushing their entire head out
of the water to check out the surroundings out of the water. I think it’s somewhat
akin to global positioning.
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| Spyhopping |
And then there’s the tail-flap,
which they can keep doing for minutes at a time to stun the fish around them
for feeding. The noise is deafening.
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| Tail flapping |
But the one thing I will never
grow tired of, regardless of how many whales we see, is the balletic grace of
the humpback’s dive, as they so smoothly glide their back out of the water and
then raise their tail fluke in a final wave as they descend into the water.
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| Such a graceful dive ... water balletics |
The fluid elegance of this simple
movement propels me to always want to capture it in a photo and I’m sure I’ll
have hundreds before the summer is out.
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| Three in a row ... must be good luck!!!! |
A little more than an hour after
passing the humpbacks, we also ran into a pod of Orcas. Also known as killer
whales, these black and white beautiful creatures are actually not a whale, but
considered the largest dolphin.
Interestingly, despite being
smaller than humpbacks, Orcas are the only enemy of a humpback in the sea.
Finally, just before pulling into
the entrance of Inian Cove, our anchorage for the evening, we had another show
of whales. National Geographic had an exploration boat nearby with a number of
inflatables in the water watching the whales.
From our vantage point, it looked
like they were at times within 50 feet of the whales .... although I’m sure the
distance was much greater. In any event, those boats had a whale of a show – if
you will pardon the pun!
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