Wildlife Safari in Southeast Alaska

   It has been a crazy week. I feel like our guests have experienced more exceptional wildlife encounters than most crew does working all season. Alaska is definitely providing for those willing to step out of their bubbles and hit the deck running. 

   This week started off with multiple sightings of black bears in the fjord leading up to Dawes Glacier. Then arctic terns and harbor seals lounging about on ice flows. We ran across orcas back out in Stephens Passage, who led us to more orcas that were predating on a dall's porpoise. Then we found the early season motherload of humpback whales with another pod of dall's porpoise. Then after birthday celebrations in front of a huge waterfall at Red Bluff Bay, we entered brown bear territory. Here we had a close encounter with two young bears on the beach at our landing spot! They trotted off into the woods and used our trail (really their trail), to stay well ahead of us until venturing off into the forest. We awoke the next morning at the northeast tip of Baranof Island to the sight of two brown bears mating on the shoreline. They kept at it for about 50 minutes and then just hung out eating grass as we landed across the river outlet and hiked off into the forest. Then after surviving a wild skiff ride up a river into a hidden cave, we came back out to see more orca heading up Chatham Strait. So we zipped out with the skiffs and found ourselves in between orca, dall's porpoise, harbor porpoise, and humpback whales. Just as we left, one of the humpback did a massive breach. I couldn't imagine anything getting better and then it did... bubble net feeding humpback whales. I was pretty shocked to see this behavior in early June, and in the middle of Chatham Strait. The group is really getting the trip of a lifetime. In fact, it may be the new trip to represent the apex of just how much you can pack into a week here in Southeast Alaska. 

  And its only been 5 days.

Hopefully there is still more to come.