Sitka Nature

Today while on tour, we had the pleasure of watching a humpback whale breach multiple times over a relatively short period of time.  We had seen the whale near the entrance to Redoubt Bay and watched it there for a few minutes before moving south to view some Sea Otters at Fragrance Island.  While we were watching it the first time, it was behaving in a manner that seems typical for the whales I’ve seen this summer.  It would make series of short shallow dives, surfacing every few seconds, before making a deeper dive and staying down for several minutes.

On our way back north, we were going to take a look at a gray whale that had been spotted by another Allen Marine vessel.  As we were approaching the area where the gray whale had been seen, the humpback whale breached in the distance (though within sight). It started waving its pectoral flukes in the air and rolling, with both a pectoral fluke and tail fluke showing out of water.   The gray whale did not seem nearly as charismatic as this active humpback, so we went towards the humpback to get a better look at its activities.  While we, a couple of other Allen Marine boats, and a smaller boat or two that were in the area watched, this whale repeatedly breached.  It was pretty amazing.  I have included some of the photos below.

To all the Red Hat Society ladies who were on the tour with us and read this entry, I hope you enjoyed the rest of your trip.  It was fun having you on tour.

I had two tours today with Allen Marine.  Both of them were Sea Otter and Wildlife Quest tours, so we did not have any beach walks.

Weather:  It was overcast this morning, with some partial clearing in the afternoon.  Winds seemed to be pretty calm.  On the way back in to Jamestown Bay after the tours, there was a rainbow.  It started out fairly faint, but ended up being one of the most intense I have seen.

Birds:  On the morning tour we went out to St. Lazaria and got to see the birds out there.

On the second tour, we had stopped to watch a whale near Redoubt and I noticed flock of about 5 black birds flying.  At first I thought they might be geese based on the way they were flying, but a quick look in my camera made me conclude they were cormorants (based on the black color).  Watching the whale distracted me from the birds for a few minutes until the captain asked me about them.  He was confident they were not cormorants, so we decided they were probably Brants.

The phalaropes seem to be getting more abundant.  I saw a few in Crescent Bay today (though I doubt they would have been visible from shore).

Other Notes:  There was a doe and a fawn in a small cove near the head of Redoubt Bay.

There were a couple of folks dipnetting in the right falls at Redoubt.  We did not see them pull anything in, however.

We were treated to some pretty spectacular breaching by a whale on the second tour (more on that on a later entry).