This morning we were again awakened by the soft voice of our expedition leader, telling us the weather conditions, outside temperature and KILLER WHALES ON THE BOW!! Even before breakfast, we were all on deck marveling at the sight of these sleek and beautiful predators of the sea. Robin Baird, our marine mammal specialist, has worked with this particular group of killer whales in the past and immediately knew one of the 3 subgroups as AQ pod. The large male in the pod, AQ32, has a huge dorsal fin with a unique notch out of the upper rear edge and one of the females, AQ31, was a past recipient of one of his instrument packages. The ship kept with the group during our breakfast and we were soon all back on deck watching a variety of behaviors including breaching, tail lobbing, tail slapping, spy hopping and lots of multiple whale interactions. In addition, some of the staff took a Zodiac and a hydrophone (underwater microphone) near the whales and away from the noise of the ship and broadcast the haunting underwater sounds of the whales back to us on the Sea Bird. What a thrill to watch and listen to killer whales in action-in the wild!!
As we continued watching this killer whale group later in the morning, Robin commented that he thought they were exhibiting feeding behavior. A few minutes later, an eagle swooped down near the whales and scooped up some intestine from what was probably a freshly killed harbor seal. Another few minutes passed and we noticed a large fin making tight circles off the starboard bow of the Sea Bird. As the fin came closer to the ship, we were able to see that it was attached to a 6 foot white shark. None of the naturalist staff had seen a white shark in Southeast Alaska before and we were all thrilled to watch it circling alongside our vessel/home, probably, like the eagle, attracted to the Orca kill.
