Written during my first week at the Alaska Whale Foundation, June 2018
More water, a tent for sleeping on the roof of the boat, sunnies, directional hydrophones, and an outdoor toilet. Andy, Dana, Robert, Rocio and myself have just returned from an epic five days of eating a lot of PB&J sandwiches during our circumnavigation of Admiralty Island here in South East Alaska and this is our list of what to improve on for the next time.
The adventure began in the engine room for the Alaskan Whale Foundation the Centre for Coastal Conservation. We looked at the giant maps and plotted a survey that would take us past various fjords into North Chatham strait then briefly into Icy Strait, up to Lynn Canal then down Stephens Passage into Fredrick Sound then rounding Pt. Gardner we would soon be back in the familiar waters of Warm Springs bay.
Warms springs bay has an epic waterfall cascading into the bay
A survey of this scale had never been done before and this would take us deep into Southeast Alaska. We would travel over 250 miles, we would have to avoid ice bergs, bears, and thousands of fishermen and their gill nets working the same waters as us. Many people said it couldn’t be done.
So some background; The waters of Southeast Alaska hold some of the most incredible whales in the world and we want to understand their behavior. These whales cooperatively feed in a method you may have heard of called bubble netting. It is understood that groups (between 2 and 20) of unrelated whales communally produce and use bubble nets and vocalizations to trap fish as easy prey. Our aim would be to survey Southeast Alaska’s waters to begin to get a better estimate of how many whales do this and hopefully find out which whales are producing the vocalizations.
A large male Killer Whale with the snowy Baranof island in the background - image captured under permit 19703
Bubble netting lunge - image captured under permit 19703
After a week at the field station testing gear, and driving boats we have 126 survey points plotted in our GPS, both boats fueled up and an excellent weather forecast. This is happening! AWF has two vessels Paula T, and Barbara Bell which will travel in parallel so we can survey each coastline as we make our way around Admiralty Island. Day 1 gave us an exciting start as both vessels found bubble netting groups early on and then we finished the day watching a very active group feeding. Then as the group parted late in the evening we got to see their disassociation displays which included whales breaching and generally have a good time splashing on the surface. Finally, as we set up the extravagant sleeping arrangements and crack an Alaskan Icy Bay (The best IPA around) two young bears wandered across a beach thirty meters from us. On a day like this you never forget you’re in Alaska.
We've had some amazing encounters with the Baranof Brown beers
The next two days flew by without many whale sighting but still lots of sea otters, seals, abundant bird life and amazing views of glaciers seeming to come down though the clouds down to the ocean. These two survey days also coincided with two major salmon openings so we found ourselves amongst up to forty or fifty gill nets while listening and looking for whales. This really tested our newly acquired zodiac driving skills. The third day we finishedat Tracy arm, this is one of South East Alaska most impressive inlets a deeply carved fjord filled with bergs from the receding Sawyer Glacier almost four kilometers from the moraine. The long days gave us the opportunity to take Barbara Bell to the carving face and incredible view and we all felt very lucky to be able to see the glacier from the water. The last 500m was filled with ice and the GPS said we should’ve been traveling on land a crazy thought that the rocks around us had only just been uncovered.
Ice falling from the Sawyer Glacier
We spent all of day four traveling South and we could hear a group of bubble netters feeding, the pulsing screams of the whales never seemed to get louder so we couldn’t figure out their location. Eventually we spotted the group traveling so they were no longer making noise but as they found some fish they began to feed. This was a group of four whales with multiple vocalizing whales, the sounds are incredibly loud and can easily be heard without a hydrophone. Most groups appear to just have one vocalizer so this group was quite unique and unlike anything else we had heard.
On the last night we camped at the Brothers islands and enjoyed an amazing sunrise to begin the another beautiful day on the water. We found two more groups of bubble netters making six groups in total found on survey as well as Cow and Calf traveling as we made our way back into Warm Springs Bay. We couldn’t wait to get back to the hot springs after and an especially successful five-day circumnavigation of Admiralty Island.
