.. and lots of early season bubble netting
One of the joys of living in Alaska is seeing our wildlife. Most of us who live in Southeast don’t really go out on whale watches or any of the tours, since many residents have access to their own boats/kayaks/personal watercrafts. Our whale watching companies offer local & standby rates to us, for when there’s open seats remaining from the cruise ship blocks or last-minute cancellations.
Earlier this month, we escorted a handful of travel writers on a Juneau Lighthouse Tours expedition that turned into a “Harv & Marvs” whale watch – instead of visiting the Sentinel Island Lighthouse, the kind folks at the company (Harv & Marvs / Juneau Lighthouse Tours / Alaska Galore are the same boats/guides/etc, just cater to different audiences & tours) mentioned there were whales bubble net feeding, but it would mean we have to skip the lighthouse.
Everyone voted to skip the lighthouse, and wow it was an amazing experience!
As we got further south in Lynn Canal and passed Young Bay (30 minutes south of Auke Bay, where all the whale watching & charter boats depart), we saw some bubble netting in the distance!
I’ve been in Juneau since 2009 and I’ve only seen it from afar, never this close… and Graham, our captain, got us as close as the rules permit and shut down our engine. It was quite the experience seeing the whales perform this action, which involves one whale diving below all the others, swim in a circle to corral the fish, and then all the submerged whales swim upward with their mouths open and swallow whatever fish is in their way!
We spent our maximimum time watching them feed, their position was always changing – sometimes it was close to the boat and we were able to get pictures / videos, other times we were too far away to see much of anything.
But it was still wonderful to see, especially this early in the season.
Since we saw the bubble netting, we took another whale watch a few days ago with some clients, and while we didn’t see bubble netting, we had about 7 or 8 whales breaching near us and got a surprise near Coughlin Island – a pod of orcas!
For those of you coming up to Juneau on a cruise or independently this year, we highly recommend booking a whale watch. Juneau *is* the whale watching capital of the world, and while we have our favorites, there’s plenty of companies offering a variety of types that will suit your travels. You can book yours at voyij.com
