Whale Watching

Yesterday i went into the whale watching tour shop across from the tram (where i work) and asked about their tours. How much? For how long? Any guarantees? Price: $110, 3 hrs, half your money back if you don't see a whale. Then i asked about discounts because i work for Goldbelt Co. (not proud of that). She told me i could get half off. I can do $55 to whale watch. So i go in there today, they had just enough room for me, and i sign some waivers and their like OK your set. How much do i owe you. They say, it's free for you. WHAT!!!...Free (the best things in life are free, riding bicycles, hiking mountains, ect.) Yes, so i got a completely free whale watching tour. We left out of Auke Bay, which is a nice bay 10 miles north of downtown. The tour took us north in to the Lynn canal. Lynn canal is actually the biggest fjord in North America. Most everyone knows what a fjord is but what i didn't know is that fjords (if it is a true fjord) were all formed by glaciers. The glaciers have moved rock and earth and everything into those formations of steep and deep landscape because they are so heavy. Really, really cool. So we are headed north toward the Lynn canal (i am sitting in front on the boat) and we're driving around and a long ways up the guide and i see a humpback whale breech (fly out of the water and make a big splash). I was the only tourist to see it!!! Luckily my father and uncles taught my how to spot animals when i was young (thank you to them), But it was a long ways away. So we cruise up there to watch him. We got within 80 yards of him and he was blowing water like crazy and swimming around. After a bit we headed south to look for more. We saw quite a few more and one of them was swimming right at us and got about 30 yards from us and dove strait down, stuck his tail way up in the air and was off. That was really cool. We also saw some sea lions. The picture above are sea lions with Herbert glacier in the background. Herbert glacier is the glacier i hiked to last week.

Here are some more facts about whales that i learned doing some reading and on the tour: Humpback whales mate and give birth in the winter in Hawaii every year and then swim up to south east Alaska to feed for the summer. They are mammals of course but i guess i had forgotten that they have to come up to the surface to get air, but they can hold their breath. In south east Alaska they have humpback whales and orca whales (killer whales). It is pretty hard to see orcas due to how fast they swim (up to 45 mph). The tour guide said they see them about once a week, but they are on the water 12 hours a day 7 days a week.
As you can see in the photo above humpbacks have a very small dorsal fin, i never knew that. They are slowly losing it due to evolution. Norway, Iceland and Japan are the only countries that still allow whaling (whale hunting).

I didn't get very many photos, i would much rather watch the whales with my eyes rather than watch them through a camera. They were magnificent. I wish one would have poked his head out so i could see his face. Most of what i saw was their back and tails. I will see more soon though. They were everywhere in the canal. I saw probably 5 whales close up and then another 7 off in the distance. I know the photo looks kinda lame but it's really hard to get a good shot when the boat is moving and the whale is swimming away. deal with it.

I mapped out the boat route and where we saw most of the whales using Google maps
I hope people know that you can zoom in and out and move around with these maps
too see this route click here.

Today marks 2 months away from going home. It is going fast. I am really trying to make the most of it. Everyday i have off i try to do something fun.

Also tomorrow is summer solstice. Happy summer to everyone, the environment shapes our lives way more than we know. I hear it has been uncomfortably hot in MPLS. That's too bad suckers. ha ha. It was 75 here today (dry heat).
All for now-Chao