Tuesday, August 31, 2004
This morning we followed two pods of Humpback whales in Chatham Strait watching them feed.  Pete Pederson provided commentary from the Sea Lion's foredeck assisted by a hydrophone, which allowed us to hear the sounds the whales make.  We learned to correlate the sounds and especially the activity of the congregated seagulls with the feeding activities of the whales.  Feeding is a cooperative venture. The pod essentially herds schools of fish with their song and a ring of bubbles to a small, compact group of (mainly) herring. It is called "bubble net feeding."   The lead humpback lunges to the surface through the school of fish, mouth agape followed by his fellow whales catching the overflow on all sides.   The whole pod breaches with a mighty splash… one whale in the lead, the others clustered tightly around!   The group blow (breathe) and porpoise on the surface for the next minute or two and then, one by one they dive, with a great show of fluke to dis

appear again for some minutes as we try to guess once again where they'll surface.  Our helmsman is pretty experienced at this sort of thing and once or twice he positioned the ship so that the whales surfaced right next to us allowing great photo and video coverage.

In the afternoon, we repositioned to a quiet cove where Paul went ashore for the "medium" hike.  It was pretty strenuous.  David Stephens led us.  We went so far that David was called on his walkie-talkie to remind him that we were due back at the beach for the group who were going kayaking.  We were so far away that they sent a Zodiac to pick us up and shuttle us back to the beach.  The group on the "long hike" encountered a couple of Brown Bear.  One was at the salmon ladder where it coolly took a fish right in front of the hikers and kayakers and ambled off.  We were at that salmon ladder, too -that's where the Zodiac picked us up, but not when the bear was fishing.