The Steller Sunrise Part Two, Whales!

Some of you may be wondering if I don't know how to spell "Stellar" and I am here to tell you that I do. The Steller Sunrise is named after Georg Steller, and German Natural Scientist from the 18th century who was responsible for many significant discoveries in Alaska and in Russia. He was treated very poorly by those rotten Russians. Read the book Where the Sea Breaks Its Back for more information.

About halfway through the trip, as we were leaving the Holgate Glacier, we started seeing Whales.

At first we just saw a humpback feeding:

yes, that is a humpback.

and while we were all happy to see it, nobody got that excited.

Then, one of the passengers started running to the front of the boat (by this time we had taken refuge in the back) and was shouting, "Breaching whale!"

We all ran up, and the skipper pointed us in the right direction.

Soon we all saw this:

 Then this:

And this:

 and this:

and finally this:

and this:

 and this:

Just fantastic!

He signed off with a fluke wave:

and left. (I think my photo is too fuzzy to identify which whale this is)

We saw two more humpbacks breach, and one of them put his tail up and slapped the water at least a dozen times:

Not much to top that.

But we did see a fishing boat being chased by Black Legged Kittiwakes and Glaucous Winged Gulls on the way home:

and some happy fishermen on the dock:

It was a heck of a day.