Seward Whales

Seward is another small town on the Kenai Pennisula. It serves the multitudes of cruise ships that come into it’s ports for 4 months a year with great fishing, glacier and wildlife tours. We decided to take a wildlife cruise in hopes of spotting some whales.

Before the tour began, we entertained by sea otter happily laying on his back eating, and two bald eagles overlooking the small harbor. But things got really interesting once we got out to open waters. We were lucky enough to witness about 20-25 Humpback whales ‘bubble-net feeding’. Whales swim in a shrinking circle blowing bubbles below a school of fish. This shrinking column of bubbles surrounds the school of fish forcing them upward. The whales spontaneously swim upward through the bubble net, mouths wide open, catching thousands of fish in one gulp.

The captain and rangers aboard said they’d never seen so many whales practicing this complex and coordinated hunting tactic. We seemed to have the show almost to ourselves for almost an hour. There were a couple fishing vessels, which seemed microscopic when the whales breached near them. At one point, the whales swam under our boat. Later, the broke off into two groups and continued to hunt, but we had a group on each side of the boat.

We rewarded our good luck with wildlife with a crab leg dinner.