Snow, Whales, And Sunken Boats…

We Woke up to snow, cloudy skies, and more snow falling. We had hoped for clear weather, but off we went. In Cierva Cove we made a quick anchorage to say hi to a friend. The stop worked in our favor, as the snow stopped and clouds lifted so we were able to see a bit more of the beauty around us. Cierva Cove is always a beautiful spot – it’s a gathering spot for icebergs and is surrounding by many penguin colonies, so porpoising penguins abound. What does that mean? Penguins porpoising? It is in fact when penguins are swimming distances and they jump up and out of the water – sort of like a porpoise or a dolphin swimming along. For whatever reason this never gets shown in penguin documentaries – only waddling and penguins diving down to get food. But really they porpoise quite a bit in order to efficiently get where they are going!

We continued south through Graham Passage –a narrower channel surrounded by glaciers. As we were within spitting distance of our final destination Mari spotted whales “dead head” (dead ahead, but at least a few hundred meters ahead). We slowed down and got a magnificent display of 4-6 whales – plenty of whale tail displays, some feeding. We’re hoping we captured a few good shots for Happy Whale. Happy Whale is an organization that collects photos of whales and then opens up the database to all scientists. It also emails you once “your” whale that you took a photo of has been identified and then subsequent emails every time someone else also spots that whale – one whale I’ve taken a photo of has been seen as far north as Panama – a pretty cool project. And as the whales headed the opposite direction that we were going, we continued to Foyn Harbor for the night – we had the anchorage to ourselves – alongside an old whaling vessel, the Govornouren. More info to come – for now we are waking up to beautiful blue skies days and about to hop in the kayaks to explore this beautiful anchorage.

-Laura

a note to our readers (and Val!) we are getting your comments – you are doing everything right. we need to approve them before they are visible, but be assured we are seeing them here onboard – so keep the comments coming!