Kenai Peninsula

The Coastal Explorer was our faithful ship for the Kenai Fjords Tour. The boat is large and fairly stable for those persons that are subject to a little seasickness. They had a little galley and served up a nice lunch of halibut and chips. The spotter also had a dead eye for wildlife.

Bald eagles were fairly common including several along the boat route. They even hung out in Seward along the path between town and the docks.

This is the mate of the bald eagle above who was doing watch duty while this one sat on the nest.

The Bear Glacier is in easy distance of Seward and pretty spectacular. There were some small chunks of ice that fell in but no major calvings while we were there.

The Kenai Peninsula is home to many Black Bears (as is Prince William Sound as you will see later). This one was checking us out from a grassy hillside.

Dall's Porpoise rode along our bow as we headed to Bear Glacier. You can see the dorsal cutting the surface of the water as they raced along with us. This is my meager attempt to get a picture with the 500mm lens. Ironically, they were SO CLOSE, I couldn't get the whole porpoise in one frame (and didn't have time to get the 18-200mm).

Fin Whale, Balaenoptera physalus.  Growing up to 88 feet long, the fin whale is the second largest living animal, second only to the blue whale.  There was a large swarm of whales in the area suggesting that there was a lot of food in the area as well.  There were so many whales that the narrator called it "whale soup!"  I was sad to leave this area as there were lots of pictures to be had.

Killer Whale, Orcinus orca, commonly referred to as the orca.  Orca's are toothed whales and are in the oceanic dolphin family.  The Orca's closest living related species is the snubfin dolphin.  The nice sized pod of killer whales stayed near to the boat for quite some time, allowing me to snap a whole bunch of killer whale pictures including several where they would come up high in the water as in this picture.

Here is what may be a family of killer whales. Notably the young and the females have curved fins. I'm guessing this is (from left to right) male, juvenile and female in that order (plus one small murrelet in the corner).

There were humpback whales everywhere. They were fairly busy feeding so none of them gave much of a show in the form of breaches, slaps, etc. Still, it was amazing to see so many of them.

The rocks along the side often had harbor seals resting on them. This one had a young pup. Given the Killer Whales in the neighborhood, a solid perch on a rock is a good thing.  From the pensive look in their eyes, perhaps even that is not a sure thing.

There was a large colony (or two) of Steller Sealions along the way. The huge one is the male guarding his harem. You would occasionally see barking matches with younger males as well.

The Marbled Murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) nests in old growth forests, putting it at risk due to logging and deforestation.  Ironically, they remind me of flying penguins.

I saw a fair number of tufted puffins out on the open water, not appearing particularly worried about the good number of whales in the area or the large boat that we were in, for that matter.

This Oyster Catcher was along the rocks and appeared none too worried about the big boat full of gawking tourists. Of course, this is with a 500mm lens so we weren't really THAT close.

White Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus).  We saw a small herd of mountain goats along the rocks. Unfortunately, they were pretty far up the slope so, even my gargantuan 500mm lens yielded little more than blurry goat. This is one of the larger of the three or four goats that were lounging on the hillside.

The drizzly weather offered up a very solid rainbow for us on the return trip to Seward harbor.