Whale Hugs!

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Took a bus trip with a bunch of fellow naturalists (plus a few other cool people tossed in for good measure....) to the Baja in Mexico to go look for whales in the lagoons there! Gray whales leave their Alaskan feeding grounds for the lagoons in Baja to have their babies. The cold Alaskan water is too cold for skinny new baby whales. Plus, these lagoons are safe from predators, like Orcas, which are known to snack on baby gray whales. Anyway, in these lagoons, the gray whales can sometimes be quite friendly. The photos should prove that! These only show the baby who came over for hugs. Seriously. Mom was present below the surface paying CLOSE attention. After a bit, Mom came over for hugs too. Many more great photos to come, after I get over being sick! Such an amazing experience.

The bottom photo shows my hand on a barnacle covered baby gray. The two oval stripey things are whale lice that eat dead skin.

Morning possum.

This possum was frozen into position by my ferocious barking Yorkie. It froze long enough for me to go in and get my camera and take a bunch of pics. It eventually walked along the fence and disappeared. "Playing Possum" is a behavior of possoms. When frighten, they freeze or play dead. And while they do sort of look like big rats, they are related to kangaroos. They give birth to tiny "premature" babies with climb up into mom's pouch until they are ready to face this cold, cruel world. They also have prehensile tails, which means the tails can function sort of like an extra hand or finger.

Elephant Seals 2

Elephant Seals

Alaskan Cruise-Humpback Bubble Net Feeding Part Two

This set of pics shows a second round of feeding. I got to see them do this procedure about 5 or 6 times. Incredible! The pink stripe is the inside roof of the mouth. This set shows the neck pleats pretty well.

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Special greetings to those I met on the cruise ship!

Alaskan Cruise-Humpback Bubble Net Feeding Part One

These photos show the amazing cooperative behavior that Humpback Whales perform. This is a group of about 15 Humpbacks. The group is led by a large female who signals to the other whales. One whale goes down and blows a circle of bubbles below a school of small fish, like F=Krill. The fish are then trapped in the net of bubbles. Then all the whales come up through the tunnel of bubbles, with their huge mouths open, scooping up the fish. You will see all the open mouths at the surface. Humpbacks have pleated throats that expand like a ballon to trap large quantity or fish. Then, inside their mouths, baleen filters out the fish from the water. It was so cool to see this rare behavior in person!

Click any photo for a larger view. All images are copyrighted, but if you know me, your welcome to a copy for your personal use. Email me for a high resolution image.

Alaskan Cruise-Salmon and Eagles

The first two photos show a fishing boat with a catch of salmon. Eventually a second boat pulled up and used a vacuum tube to suck the salmon out of the net.

The last three photos show bald eagles. The last two photos the eagle has a salmon in its talons.

Click any photo for a larger view. All images are copyrighted, but if you know me, your welcome to a copy for your personal use. Email me for a high resolution image.

Alaskan Cruise-Baby Humpback Performing

These are photos of a demonstrative baby Humpback whale. This baby breached (leaped out the water) over and over again, showing off. Then the baby rolled over and waved it fin at us for a while, and finally it put it's head down and waved it's tail repeatedly, but not diving. It was great fun to see this.

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Alaskan Cruise-Sea Lions

Two photos of sea lions on a bouy is the harbor at Juneau.

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Alaskan Cruise-Glacier Photos

Below are pictures from Glacier Bay. This glacier is advancing towards the ocean where pieces regularly break off into the ocean. This is called "calving". The bottom two pics of this group show calving. There's a loud noise like a gunshot that occurs. The pieces are often very large.

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Alaskan Cruise-Orca Pics

Below are five pictures of Orca Whales, or Killer Whales. The bottom picture in this group shows a mother and baby shoulder to shoulder!

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Whale Watching Batch Two

Click any image for a larger view. The second batch from my March 6 whale watching trip.

A pretty good tail shot of a humpback getting ready to dive deep.


A second later...


This is a side fin or flipper, as this humpback is actually rolling over sideways! Another first for me to see. It looked like the whale was waving at us.


At least two whales here. This group of whales was quite large, and very uninhibited by our boat's presence. We got close enough at one point to smell whale breath, which smells rotten, and unpleasant.


There are three whales in this photo.