Pacific NW

Expeditions

We have just witnessed a major whale event in the Peril Strait. Spectacular! The boat became surrounded on all sides by many, many humpback whales. Right off the bow, stern, port, starboard, underneath the boat, and all over the horizon perhaps 50 whales surged up from the water! We were witness to a huge lunge-feeding! All we could do was scream as the 45-50 foot long whales breached completely out of the water, all around the boat. I have never seen anything like it! In conjunction with the whales, salmon were leaping everywhere too. The whales drew closer. Our surroundings became a chaos of flukes, flippers, enormous splashes as they leapt free of the water. The tremendous sounds of their breathing and spray from their blowholes erupted everywhere in all quadrants of the horizon. Several more squadrons of humpbacks were a few hundred yards off, and we were smack in the midst of a very large pod. The experience is impossible to describe, and no I-Max Theater could ever do it justice. It brought tears to my eyes. Twice the length of our boat, the whales swam directly alongside us. They arched their huge backs and threw their giant flukes up into the air when they sounded. We awoke to drizzle in the morning. Pulling up the crab trap we found one rock crab, two tanner crabs, a giant starfish, and a softball- sized hermit crab. We kept the rock crab and boiled it for breakfast. Fresh Alaskan crab is superior tasting to lobster, in my opinion. Justin and I are still on our diet of eating nothing except what we glean from the sea. It was a long drizzly run up Chatham Strait to Tenakee. On shore we spotted a giant bear running down the beach at a tremendous velocity! The bear thrashed from side to side and ran aimlessly in all directions, sometimes throwing itself into the ocean with a terrific splash. I had always heard bears could run really fast, but this was unbelievable! It appeared half-crazed. The salmon around the boat were doing their acrobatics and swimming into a river mouth where the crazy bear and several other bears were milling about. We arrived at Tenakee in darkness at 2300 hours and promptly walked into town, where we took our soaks in the wonderful hotsprings there. It is always a good feeling to be back in Tenakee–I really like this village.