I’m back from Alaska, and while we tended to be asleep before true darkness since we were there right around the summer solstice, thus missing any potential Aurora Borealis, we did see plenty of wildlife: A black bear, stellar sea lions, harbour seals, bald eagles¹, sea otters, enormous ravens, and, of course, orcas and humpback whales. There are probably some other birds we saw that are unusual, but despite my love of Wingspan, I couldn’t identify them. However, that is partly linked with watching glaciers calve at the time. We saw a lot. So it seems appropriate to follow up on the Alaskan… not quite history post that I made with some items to help share the sights.

Starting with what was a highlight of the trip: bubble net feeding humpback whales. For those of you who don’t feel like reading a whole Wikipedia article, this is a group-feeding behaviour that only certain humpbacks perform, and they need to learn it from other humpbacks. The group² circles around their prey, exhaling air bubbles to trap them in a circle or spiral, then the whales swim right up the middle, mouths wide open. We were pretty low to the water, so we couldn’t see the spiral in the water, but we certainly saw plenty of flukes, dorsal fins, and “big Buddha bellies,” as our tour guide put it whenever we saw a breach.