Whale Watching

For those of you who don't know -Cameron and I went on a cruise to Alaska with my family for my Dad's 70th Birthday party! All of my siblings and spouses(minus one couple) came along with my parents good friends, the Conlees and my in laws (who we made tag along). It was a week long cruise on Royal Caribbean from Vancouver, BC up the inside passage ending in Seward, Alaska.

On day 5, we went whale watching at Icy Strait Point and our tour boat didn't even get us 5 minutes away from our cruise ship when the guide got all excited and said he could see a "Bubble net" and that that was super special and important!!! Humpback whales get together in a group and circle around a school of fish causing a bubble net and then they pounce on the school eating as much as they can in one swoop! We got to witness this 3 times! My parents and a few others from our group were on an earlier tour and missed out on this. I got a few good pictures and feel lucky that we saw so many whales in a short amount of time. We think we saw as many as 6 humpbacks although I didn't get a picture of all 6. I wish I had taken a video instead of pictures so you could get the full effect. It was hard to take a picture of that first moment of them coming out of the water because they would circle and then you'd never know how long it would be before they jumped up! I highly recommend going whale watching! It was an amazing site especially with the beautiful Alaska background.

Here is the first bubble net that we saw.

whale mouth and fin while feeding!

More of the whales mouths jumping out of the water.

another circle of whales feedingwhale blowing next to another whale

here are at least 4 whales swimming together and below a whale tail.Bald Eagle perched on Rock that we saw on our whale watching tour.

Here is the stellar sea lion that we saw! I know you can see it soooo well and that you're really impressed with my photography skills!