Capturing the Moment

The Whales are Back     Cruising through Alaska's Inside Passage on a small cruise ship gives me a wonderful opportunity to photograph whales. The usual suspects of the whale watching world up here at Humpbacks, Orca, and Dall's porpoise. Every once in a while a minke whale joins in the feeding frenzy but they are quite rare to see. We are coming into the thick of whale season here in the Northern feeding grounds. Nearly 22 hours of light provide almost unlimited growing potential to the phytoplankton that start the marine food web. As the phytoplankton photosynthesizes and grows in number, the zooplankton (like krill) are able to sustain a huge population, which in turns feeds the humpbacks. They have to eat enough to sustain themselves only off of their food stores in their blubber once they head back south to the tropical breeding grounds.    Orca Tail Slap    The orca and porpoise rely less on the season, and are able to stay here...

Known for their acrobatic displays the spinner dolphin, ( Stenella longirostris ) is a year round resident of our coastal Maui waters. They frequent shallow sandy bays during the day to rest, making them the most commonly encountered dolphins on our Pacific Whale Foundation eco-cruises. Some days you can find a pod over a hundred dolphins strong and coupled with calm, sunny conditions it can be great for photographing. Still, these are marine mammals only spending a fraction of their time near the surface so snapping that perfect photograph can be quite the challenge. I think that is one of the really rewarding things about wildlife photography.  The spinner dolphins are one of the smaller species that we find, often weighing less that a full grown human. What they lack in size they make up for in aerial flips, twists, and spins. Our research is looking into what purpose these acrobatics might have. The leading theory now is for communication. The splash sending a sound wave...