Unforgettable Moments at Sea! #1

While captaining a whale watching tour outside of Sitka Alaska, I happened to be at the right spot at the right time to get a photo of this large bull Orca coming right at me. This photo was taken just south of Whitestone Narrows, 18 miles north of Sitka. It is one of my favorite photos that I have taken of whales. Of course, orca are not man killers, but their name, Killer Whale evokes shivers down the spines of a lot of people. I love the way the Orca's wake is breaking ahead showing the forward motion and power. I love the long and tall dorsal fin signifying a large male.

In 1996, I witnessed a group of ten Orca teaching their young how to hunt by practicing with an adult Sea Otter. In the end they didn't kill the Otter, but they pounced on him and swatted him back and forth like a beach ball. The whole incident took about 20 minutes and then as fast as the drama began, off the pod went and we stayed to see the poor Otter swim to the shore and slowly drag himself up on the bank as if every bone in his body was broken.

Otters have very little body fat. They are just one big fir ball so an Orca would really rather make a meal of a juicy and blubbery seal or sea lion. 

Orca are really family oriented and stay together in their own clans. Many times, out on tour,

I have come upon a cow, a bull, and a calf or two moving through Sitka Sound on their never ending quest for food.

Here is a photo of some Sea Otters that I took in Saint Johns Bay on the way to Salisbury Sound. The blonder faced Otter is simply older than the darker one.   When resting, Otters swim on their backs and hold their front and back paws out of the water in-order to stay warmer as those parts are not covered in fir.

Me, piloting the SEA OTTER EXPRESS in 1995. 

F/V Kimosabe.........Trusty scout???

This is a photo of the fishing vessel "Kimosabe" in Sitka Sound in Southeast Alaska.(approximately 1997) It is aground on a rock that most of the time is right under the surface. The rock is located in the middle of the channel between Middle Island and Little Gavanski Island. You can see some of the city of Sitka in the background.

When I first arrived in Sitka in 1995, a local took me out into the sound to show me the hazards and obstacles. They showed me how to navigate that particular area so that I would never hit that rock. I never did!

The tragic thing about the Kimosabe is that it hit the rock right before we had 10 days of extremely low tides. Normaly, if one went aground, one would wait for the tide to flow in and then drift off of the rock. In Sitka Sound there is one low tide and one high tide in a 24 hour period. When the moon is full the tides are more extreme because of the gravitiational force the Moon puts on the Earth. During that 10 day period the high tides were never high enough to allow the Kimosabe to drift off of the rock. In the photo, she's high and dry.

The crew of the Kimosabe lacked Local Knowledge. If they had obtained Local Knowledge they never would have gone aground.

Between 2000 and 2004, I delivered fifteen high-speed catamarans from Sitka, Alaska down to Vancouver BC, and then from Florida, up to New York City. I remember that some of the inlets leading in to the intercoastal waterway along the Florida coast said, " Do not enter this inlet without Local Knowledge".

All along the route, from Fort Lauderdale to New York City, we saw grounded vessels that had not received the proper Local Knowledge. The locals can tell you where the sandbars are located. They can tell you what part of the channel is the deepest. In life, as on the sea, Local Knowledge is important and many times indispensible.

Luckily, in my marine career, I never went hard aground. One time in Guam, I got too close to the edge of a channel when I was trying to pass a sailboat that was going down the middle of the channel because of its deep draft. I rubbed the prop on the bottom and marred the edge of the propellar on coral. We had to replace the prop.

All over the planet, the rusting hulks of grounded vessels dot the shoreline.

Note Sitka, Alaska in the background.

No navigational aid can take the place of Local Knowledge. In fact, all U.S. nautical charts have the following warning: 

Warning

The prudent mariner will not rely solely on any single

aid to navigation, particularly floating aids.

Floating aids have long anchor chains connecting them to the bottom because of varying depths caused by ebbing and flowing tides. Thus, the aid is at a different location during low tide when the water is shallow. Don't just rely on a floating buoy. 

If you rely only on a chart (map), and the chart is outdated, you may go aground. 

The key is to use several different aids, Local Knowledge always being one of the most important.

I wrote the following poem in 2003 when delivering a high-speed ferry from Florida to New York where I counted 19 different grounded vessels.

May we navigate safely on the rough seas of life,

always having open ears to Local Knowledge is my prayer......

To my son Trevor,

and my grandson Jace,

who both love the sea!

Too Close For Comfort!

Photo by Brad Chapman

This photo is of a breaching Humpback whale. While captaining a tour to view Sea Otters in Sitka Sound in Southeast Alaska, I spotted a whale breaching off in the distance. I slowed down and carefully entered the area and then came to a stop to wait for the whale to blow at the surface again. I grabbed my camera and stepped out of the pilot house. No sooner did I focus the camera on the area that the whale was last seen at, when the whale breached again, right next to our vessel. I whipped the camera up to my eye and snapped the shudder. Unfortunately, it took the camera a second to focus and instead of getting the whale in a vertical position, the shudder went off with the Humpback in a horizontal position. The crack as the whale hit the surface was very loud, and, the big splash startled the tourists on the viewing deck -  they were not ready for such an explosive breach! I had never been so close to a breaching whale. I immediately felt the same reaction as when I was on hunting trips with my Dad and saw a large Bull Elk or a Coyote at close distance; hair standing straight up on the back of my neck and goose bumps. Large mammals have always mystified me. The amazing thing is that the ocean covers 3/4's of the earths surface - that makes seeing such a large creature up so close and in the wild truly a remarkable experience.

Male Humpbacks average 40 to 48 feet, with females ranging from 45 to 50 feet in length. They weigh anywhere from 25 to 40 tons. Their heads take up about one third of their body length and their most recognizable trait, their long flippers run from one quarter to one third the length of their bodies. They reach sexual maturity at age 6 to 8 years, with females giving birth every two to three years to calves weighing up to one ton and 10 to 15 feet long. Calves feed on mother's milk for a year before being weaned.  This info is from www.worldwidewhale.com/humpbackfacts.php

As you look at the photo, you can see a couple of interesting things about the Humpback Whale:

Humpbacks have the longest pectoral fins of any whale. On a humpback they can be up to 6 feet in length. That is the reason that the latin name is Megaptera Novaeangliae, which means, "Winged New Englander". The photo provides a good look at the whale's ventral pleats. They are the lines running from the head to the tail end. When a humpback opens his mouth to gulp a big mass of fish, the pleats expand and allow the whale to gulp huge amounts of fish or plankton filled seawater. The whale then pushes the water out through the baleen plates leaving a nice mass of small fish or plankton to swallow.

Here is a photo of a pectoral fin. Humpbacks like to slap the surface with their pectoral fins.

Each fin can be up to 6 feet long. Do you notice the white striped areas on the pectoral fin? Those are teeth marks from Killer Whales. A group of Killer Whales tried to drown this Humpback by biting its pectoral fins and tail and holding it under the water until it drown. They weren't successful. One interesting thing though. Look at the next photo. Do you see anything odd about the this photo of the same humpback?

It is missing the tip of its pectoral fin. Probably from the same battle where he got the tooth scrapes in his pectoral fin. I never personally saw Killer Whales take a Humpback. But a friend of mine, Ray Majeski, from Sitka, Alaska told me that he once saw a group of Killer Whales drown and eat a baby Humpback. It sounds terrible, but those Killer Whales were just providing food for their family members. 

From the tooth scars on the photo, we can see that that Humpback fought for his life and won. So goes His wonders of the deep.

Both the first picture of the whale breaching close to the boat and the second group of photos where the evidence shows that it just barely got away with his life.......were too close for comfort.

Here is a photo of Bryan and myself (1996) in the vessel I was in when I took the photos of the fin scarred whale. Bryan is about 3 years old in this photo. This vessel held 49 passengers and its top speed was 26 knots. (about 30 miles per hour) 

THE GREAT ESCAPE

......and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out!

I have always been inspired by Joseph's great escape from evil when he ran from Potiphar's wife. (Genesis 39:7-12) He didn't take time to think over the consequences, to weigh his options; he knew what was evil or dangerous, and he ran. All of us in our lives will have the need to run from evil or danger.

While captaining whale-watching ships in Alaska, I saw something in nature that reminded me of escaping from evil or danger that I would like to share with you. I took the photo below of some Harbor Seals is Sitka Sound in the late 90's. As part of a native Alaskan's subsistence rights,they can hunt Harbor Seals. They take them for their oil, their meat, and their hide. Other than that they are a protected species. Of course, seals are mammals. They have a thick layer of blubber to keep them warm in the cold Alaskan seas. They have a thick hide to allow them to rest on the sharp and rugged, rocky outcroppings along the coast. Along with showing the tourists whales, bears, otters, sea-lions, and bird life, the harbor seal was a daily treat to encounter and share with the passengers.

The harbor seals spend their day feeding on fish. When they are done feeding they like to rest on rocks that are exposed during the low tide. Harbor seals are fairly easy to locate in the wild because they frequent the same rocky outcrops. They choose the location based on its ability to safeguard them from predators and danger. They always stay close to the edge of the water so that they can quickly escape.

During the busy tourist season in Sitka, Alaska, I would visit the seals on a regular basis.

Unless there was an uncommon circumstance, like Killer Whales in the area, at a dropping tide we could find the seals. The seals would get used to us day after day. We could get in close for photos but always stayed far enough off so that we didn't distract or startle them. From time to time a tourist would drop their camera and the resulting loud noise would scare the seals into the water. But in general, they knew they were safe.

Over centuries of hunting, the Alaska natives have perfected how to hunt and take seals. One technique that the natives use is to come up on the seals with the sun at their backs. That way they could sneak up on the seals because the sun would be in the seals eyes. One day I approached the seals with the sun at my back. I was amazed that the seals immediately scrambled down into the water. There was not a second of hesitation. They knew that when a boat approached from the sun, it spelled disaster. Although they knew our big, white tour vessels that never brought them any harm, the second that I approached in the sun, they scrambled. No hesitation, no confusion; they acted, they escaped. One moment they were there, the next, they were gone.

See how these seals are observant and ready to escape into the water if danger approaches.

As Priesthood holders, we have the responsibility of recognizing evil or danger, and then acting. Before my mission, my Dad blessed me that if I always "stood in holy places", I would always be safe and protected. While serving in Japan, I saw that blessing fulfilled often.

As a licensed Captain, I learned a great lesson about steering away from danger and possible collision while piloting vessels in the Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska. Some of the waterways there were quite narrow, and when you would approach another vessel coming right at you, sometimes both of you would turn the same direction and then confusion would result until you could communicate with the vessel by radio to find out the intention of the other vessels and then act accordingly. By the time you finally communicated, you could be too close for comfort. That scenario was the cause of many collisions at sea.

Captain James E. Barber, US Navy (Retired), author of the Naval Shiphandler's Guide,

says the following about confronting danger when piloting a vessel: "When maneuvering to avoid a developing situation it is important to 'signal with your bow' to make clear your intention to the other vessel. In a meeting situation a course change of two or three degrees may be sufficient for safe clearance but it is much better to make a ten or fifteen degree change that is clearly visible to the other vessel, then return to your course when the situation has clarified." In other words, let the other captain see your course change early, while at a safe distance let him see you swing the bow of your boat away from head-on courses so that he sees your intention and can know exactly what you intention is.

The way that this translates to our lives is that we should signal with our character and integrity while we are approaching other people so that when we meet, our intention of righteousness is clear. Learn to "signal with your bow", to avoid possible collision with evil and danger.

Females were always hyper vigilant to protect their pups.

May we be like Joseph and flee from danger and evil. May we "signal with our bow" our intention of righteousness and truth. Remember, swing wide!

Notice the Gray Whale in the foreground.

I took all of these photos while piloting a vessel like the one above in Sitka Sound. These high-speed catamarans have four engines and four water jets for propulsion. These vessels are very fast and very maneuverable.