MY FRIEND, THE GRAY WHALE!
One of my most favorite sea mammals is the Gray Whale. One of the reasons is because they have the most interaction with humans. Humpback and Fin whales can swim right passed your vessel and never show any recognition of your presents. Gray Whales, however, are different. The photo below is of a Gray Whale that I saw in Sitka Sound just west of Fragrant Island. Here is the incredible story:
In 1999, skippers started seeing single Gray Whales in the Kita Island area which is out along the southeast side of the sound. One day while on tour, I took the Kalinin Express further south than anyone at Allen Marine had ever gone with passengers. We started to see a whole wall of whale blows. It ended up to be about 15 Gray Whales that had stopped for a rest on their way up to the Bering Sea. We were lucky in that the group of whales stayed with us in Sitka sound over the next several years.
One day while on a wildlife tour in the sound just west of Fragrant Island I noticed some Gray Whale blows up ahead. Gray whale blows are more heart shaped than the V shape of the Humpback Whale. I slowly maneuvered the 110 passenger tour catamaran into the area of the blows. As we set in place I decided to shut down the engines so that the passengers could hear the sound of the blows. When they finally came up there was three Grays and they came up off of our port stern quarter. I noticed that they were headed in the direction of the stern of the catamaran. I grabbed my camera and told my engineer to man the bridge and I took off like the wind. The direction the whales were heading made me think that I might get a photo when the whales passed close by the stern. When I arrived at the stern I headed straight for the starboard swim step as there was no one standing there. To my surprise, a Gray surfaced less than 10 off of the back corner of the vessel where I was standing. Right as his eye came up out of the water and made contact with me I pushed the shutter button and got the photo below.
After a short look at me and the vessel, down he went. People standing around the stern were amazed that I got such a good photo. When you watch whales long enough, you get pretty good at predicting what they are going to do.
I got back to the bridge as quickly as I could. After a few minutes we saw them surface a ways out and realized that the close encounter was over. From the photo you can see that the Gray Whale has the worst complexion of any whale. Grays have a lot of barnacles and sea lice on their hide. Grays are bottom feeders and take big bites out of the sea floor and then sift the mud through their baleen plates, collecting little organisms and swallowing them down. Below is some info about the Gray Whale from wikipedia.
I took the following photos of a spy-hopping Gray Whale between the Taigud Islands and Kita Island in Sitka Sound.
Spy hopping is a behavior that whales do when they want to see what is happening above the surface.
This is a video of a breaching Gray Whale that I took in Sitka Sound over by Kita Island.
