As we made our way into Frederick Sound, just north of the Brothers Islands, we were mesmerized by the surreal calm water, surrounded by mountains draped in veils of high and low clouds, overwhelming us with extraordinary beauty! We began seeing and hearing some blows from humpbackwhales. The blows hung suspended in the still air, long after the whales submerged. Suddenly, we noticed huge, basketball-size bubbles which appeared in a perfect circle, followed by a lunging whale in the center of the bubble net. This amazing feeding event, with single whales feeding in bubble nets, continued for the next one and a half hours!
As one of the guests, Hella Cheitlin, exclaimed "Not enough superlatives to say that today was a whale of a day!"
Carol Keiper, Naturalist
You name it for humpback behavior. Started off with breaching, moved to tail slapping, pectoral flapping and finished off with solitary bubblenet feeding. This is where they spin a net of bubbles and gorge themselves of what they can scare to the middle of the bubbles. Never seen individual whales do this before. Six or seven animals doing the net thing. That was only the morning -- PM hikes and kayaks at Cape Fanshawe.
