{"id":4606,"date":"2012-07-24T22:00:23","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T02:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=4606"},"modified":"2024-12-03T17:02:15","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T22:02:15","slug":"big-gulp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=4606","title":{"rendered":"Big Gulp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Linda Burton posting from Juneau, Alaska <\/em>\u2013 Captain Larry dropped a slender acoustic device into the water as our boat sat quietly rocking. \u201cWe\u2019ll listen for a while,\u201d he nodded, \u201cI want to know if they are coming this way.\u201d Grandson Sam\u2019s eyes got big as \u201cwhale talk\u201d filled the boat, the device clearly picking up the underwater sounds. We didn\u2019t know what it meant, but it verified that whales were near. Katie, our on-board naturalist, had already gone up top with her binoculars, watching for the sight of birds, and blow. That\u2019s where the whales would be, we\u2019d learned on the way out from Auke Bay, the \u201cblow\u201d being the burst of air expelled from the whale\u2019s blowholes, or nostrils, as they surfaced, causing a visible spray. Just off in the distance, we\u2019d spotted both, a frenzy of circling birds and geyserlike sprays. That meant whales, whales \"\"<\/a>enjoying lunch. \u201cJust like the sight of a parking lot full of cars outside a restaurant,\u201d I thought to myself, smiling, \u201cthe sign that it\u2019s a good place to eat.\u201d Then Katie yelled, \u201cIt\u2019s Sue! I see Sue!\u201d Captain Larry yanked the device from the water and swung around to start the engine. \u201cI know where they are going now!\u201d he said, and suddenly we were moving again, straight toward the whales. All of us raced to the outside deck as Captain Larry positioned the boat for a perfect view.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Katie spent a lot of time on the way out explaining \u201cwhat whales do\u201d and what we were to watch for. The birds, from their vantage point above, spot schools of fish below, and the whales from below watch the birds watching the fish; then everything comes together; it\u2019s chow time. But no patron of McDonalds ever had an idea as clever as what the whales do next. It\u2019s called \u201cbubble net feeding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sam’s Photo<\/p><\/div>\n

The whales circle the school of fish from below (it takes teamwork to pull this off); then they begin singing and blowing bubbles, scaring the fish and trapping them in a tight school inside a bubble \u201cnet.\u201d Suddenly, whoosh! The whales swim up through the fish with mouths wide open, gobbling up their banquet and lunging out of the water as they close their mouths. What a sight! We oohed and aahed and endlessly clicked cameras as Sue and her friends lunged and plunged right before our eyes, again and again and again. (My camera always caught them two seconds too late.) Humpback whales are about 45 feet long and weigh about 45 tons; we counted fourteen of them working together to feed, each time lifting at least a third of their body out of the water. Too cool!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>They are taking in a lot of water while they do that, you\u2019re thinking, and you\u2019re right. But humpbacks are baleen whales, which means they have \u201cgrooves\u201d on the lower side of their jaw and neck. These grooves expand like an accordion as the whale feeds (like Uncle Morrie\u2019s elastic-waist pants); a whale can take in hundreds of gallons of water and food at one time. After this thrilling lunge up, the whale closes its mouth on the way back down and uses its tongue to force the water out through baleen plates that work like a sieve, trapping the yummy krill, herring, sardines, and mackerel inside. Big Gulp!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The whale eases back into the water in a gentle curve, giving a satisfied flip of its tail. But I err in referring to a whales \u201ctail\u201d \u2013 the correct term is \u201cfluke\u201d and that\u2019s the way you know Who\u2019s Who in the whale neighborhood. The fluke may be as much as 18 feet across and is serrated along its trailing edge; flukes may be gray, white or black, or combinations thereof, each one unique. That\u2019s how Katie knew she\u2019d spotted \u201cSue\u201d off in the distance \u2013 whales that are tracked have ID\u2019s on file; the markings on the flukes are as distinctive as fingerprints. \u201cIf you get a photo of a whale\u2019s fluke and want to know who it is, just look it up on the internet,\u201d Katie had explained to us earlier.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So you see, Captain Larry already knew where Sue liked to feed. When Sue was spotted, he knew just where to position our boat to watch \u201cWhale Lunch.\u201d \u201cCan we go to McDonalds when we get back?\u201d Sam asked at the end of our spectacular afternoon. \u201cI\u2019m getting hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam and I were on the Whale Watching Tour offered by Orca Enterprises in Juneau; \u201cwhale sighting guaranteed\u201d was the promise on the website. Our boat, the \u201cOrca Odysea\u201d was \u201cmammal \"\"<\/a>friendly\u201d and \u201chandicap accessible\u201d and there were in fact two wheelchaired passengers on board. Captain Larry himself pushed both of them to the back deck for the very best view when our whales started feeding. The boat didn\u2019t have a propeller that might injure any animal in the water, he explained to me when I asked what made it \u201canimal safe.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

A bus picked us up at our hotel for the 30-minute ride to Auke Bay; we cruised along the shoreline of Admiralty Island, which has the largest concentration of Alaskan Brown Bears and nesting Bald Eagles in the world. Because we were in the Inside Passage, the waters were calm; we were surrounded by the \"\"<\/a>Chilkat Mountains and a few glaciers. Plenty of photo ops, including \u201cSeals on a Buoy\u201d which brought a laugh from everyone; one seal\u00a0kept swimming around looking for a spot but nobody would move over to let him on.<\/em><\/p>\n

Captain Larry was fun, low-key and quiet; he\u2019s internationally known and is considered the most experienced and professional whale watching captain in Southeast Alaska. We were tickled to see he first got interested in whales as a child in Washington\u2019s Puget Sound, our home waters.<\/em><\/p>\n

Orca Enterprises, 907-789-6801, http:\/\/www.orcaenterprises.com\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

More about whales @ Marine Education and Research of South East Alaska (MERSEA) http:\/\/www.mersea.com\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Save the Whales http:\/\/www.savethewhales.org\/humpback.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Burton posting from Juneau, Alaska \u2013 Captain Larry dropped a slender acoustic device into the water as our boat sat quietly rocking. \u201cWe\u2019ll listen for a while,\u201d he nodded, \u201cI want to know if they are coming this way.\u201d Grandson Sam\u2019s eyes got big as \u201cwhale talk\u201d filled the boat, the device clearly picking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4586,754],"tags":[777,1330,1334,1333,1328,3068,1332,1329],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4606"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27270,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606\/revisions\/27270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}