Juneau

Our first port was Juneau, where we went on a whale watching expedition. To be honest, I was not terribly interested. This fell into the "old-people" activities of concern to some about Alaskan cruises. Oh, my small sad little mind.

Shortly after beginning we ran into (figuratively not literally) a mother humpback whale and her baby. They would rise and fall for every few seconds before diving down in, flipping their tails and disappearing for ten seconds. It was beautiful to see this mammoth-sized creatures moving so gracefully in the water.

But the best was yet to come.

We ran into not one, not two, but three large groups of humpback whales engaged in bubble net feeding. According to The Internet bubble net feeding is when "A group of whales working together will dive under schools of herring, one whale will swim in a circle while blowing bubbles under the herring. When the bubbles rise they form a net and scare the herring into a tight ball in the center. The whales then come up through the middle with their mouths open, capturing large amounts food."


We saw this over and over again. It was like watching underwater ballet with two ton ballerinas. More graceful than you might expect. This was by far the highlight of the trip. But we still had more to see....