Everyone was up early, eager to see what prizes we lured into the pots.  The weather report was for rain and it started as we pulled up the pots.  Kathleen was the clear winner on the shrimp pots with quite a haul.  Kent was the winner in the crab category with two keepers.  The bait (pieces of fish such as a halibut head) had been stripped clean overnight by sand fleas leaving only the skeletons!  It was really kind of creepy but a good plot for a murder mystery (Chapter 1 - Nothing Left but the Skeleton).

We listened to the weather forecast as we pulled out on our first full day of looking for bubble feeding.  There were so many whales all around us that it was difficult to figure out which ones we wanted to follow!  We were able to watch for krill patches on the sounder and there was a ton of krill all through this area.  Recording on these whales as they feed is lots different than in Hawaii - the whales stop on a dime and change direction all of the time in order to chow down.  We kept having to start new pods as the whales we originally were following changed directions and I ended up with 2 hours of recording on 4 pods.  All of this time it was pouring rain and Adam, Pat, and Kent were out there shooting flukes all over the place.

The weather cleared a bit and the rain stopped as we crossed to the Brother Islands.  A singleton (a single humpback whale) was doing some underwater lunge feeding right smack against the shore.  It was amazing to see this 45 ton animal virtually feet from the shoreline, dining on fish that were right against the rocks.  The animal was waving his big pectoral fins and stirring up the kelp to flush out the fish and eat them.  The animal kept changing direction and rarely fluked up, probably because there was no need to dive deeply as the food was near the surface.  While following the singleton we were treated to a number of eagle sightings.

Nikki was hard at work during all of this, making a fabulous lunch of seafood chowder and 4 different kinds of pizza.  Heavenly!

Following lunch we headed out into Frederick Sound, enticed by a breaching whale.  This whale did just about every whale behavior in the book - breaching, pec slapping, rolling pec slaps, inverted tail slaps, head breaches, and peduncle throws.  All of this was accompanied by really loud tonal blows.  This whale was eventually joined by a second whale at which time the behavior stopped and both animals were actively feeding on a large concentration of krill.  According to the color sounder, these animals were driving columns of krill toward the surface with air bubbles and feeding on them.   There are pictures of the event below.

Because we haven't seen the bubble net feeding for which we need data, we decided to head toward Chatham Strait, an area where a stable group of whales has been doing cooperative bubble net feeding for many years.  The herring, the prey that drives bubble net feeding behavior in Frederick Sound, are late in coming in this year.

We followed a pod of 7 whales for a while.  They had evidently been eating well as they appeared to be logging (resting) in an area with no krill. The sun came out to cheer us all after a mostly gray day.

We anchored for the night in sight of the fishing fleet heading in for the night, near Schooner Island.  We saw some sea lions nearby and were treated to a spectacular sunset after a wonderful dinner of Alaskan black cod.  Adam gave a lecture on humpbacks and we all worked on pictures.  No matter how often I hear Adam's lectures, I always learn something new!

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Ben bringing up the first of the crab pots.	Kathleen "caught" a sea star in her shrimp pot.	This dungeness crab is a keeper,a male that is large enough.
This is a decorator crab. He uses elements from his surroundings to add to his shell as a form of camouflage.	Pat and his crab catch.	Donna reeling in the shrimp
Now this is a shrimp!	Shrimp pots
A scale crab	Bald eagle	The singleton feeding at the edge of the shore.
The singleton	The singleton moving between the two Brothers Islands	Bald eagle on the wing.
The active behaviors of one individual.  This is inverted tail slapping where the animal is on the back and slapping the water with the tail fluke.	Tail fluke with orca scars on the right blade.
Peduncle slap where the animal throws the talk stalk, or peduncle, sideways.	Slapping the water with the large pectorla fin.
Rays of sun through the clouds.  Sun!!