Aug 19. Juneau

Juneau is the capital of Alaska. That is probably surprising to some people who assume that Anchorage is the capital. It is the only capital in the US which you can not drive to from the rest of the state. It requires a plane trip or a boat trip to get to Juneau. One of their former governors tried to move the capital to Anchorage and, as a result, is not a popular person in town.

We took a whale watching excursion which included a couple of science experiments. There is a species of invasive crabs that is being watched for and monitored. We stopped to check a crab pot which was empty. The other thing we did is try to identify the whales by their tales. The fluke as it called, the underside of the tale, is unique like a fingerprint. On the boat we were on they had a catalog of all the whales they had seen in the area and as we saw them and took pictures of them our guide identified them.

SeaLions

On our way to the whale watching area we went by a buoy with some young sea lions being lazy. There were five or six of them laying on the buoy which is a channel marker. We saw another one swimming around the buoy looking for a place to join in, but there was not room. The two lions in the close up were quite cozy.

SeaLionsClose

Our guide told us that adult sea lions can be 500 pounds, 3-4 time bigger than these juveniles. He said he once saw an adult try to get on the buoy. As he did, the buoy tipped because his weight and all the other sea lions that were on it slid of into the water. That would have been a fun thing to see for sure. The Coast guard comes out a couple times a year to clean the buoy. The lions don’t like to move, even if they are been hosed down by a fire hose.

We saw lots of humpback whales (our guide called our boat captain a whale whisperer for his ability to find them). I (Chuck) took about 200 pictures, of which 25 were good! We were quite lucky to see them bubble feeding. A group of the whales get together and submerge around a school of fish. Once under water they emit bubbles of air which has the effect of trapping the fish concentrating them and forcing them toward the surface. When the fish are near the surface the whales surface at the same time getting a meal of small fish (probably herring). Swedes love herring so these must be Swedish whales. 

Our guide said to watch the birds because they knew where the whales would come up most of the time. He also said they weren’t always right. One of times we swath surface, I was lucky to have the camera pointed in the right direction and have it set to take 3 frames a second so I got some great pictures. Here a few whale pictures.

BubbleFeed

Bubble Feeding with the bird’s looking for a free meal as well.

SynchroDiving

Synchronized Whale Diving. Points taken off for not being quite in line.

Fluke

This fluke was quite distinctive and the guide recognized it immediately. 

As we were waiting for our bus to take us back to the ship Caroline spotted a bald eagle in a tree. She was able to get a very nice picture of our national symbol.

Eagle

The evening show was a broadway sing along. The cast led us in singing broadway standards. If you know me well, you know that it was not my favorite show. I can’t sing well, and I’m not a big fan of broadway musicals. Caroline liked it better and lots of others really enjoyed it.r



© Charles Eklund 2012