Ok, this was not our boat, we had one just like it, only we were on a private tour, and we only had ~26 people on ours, so we had tons of space to move around and see the whales! A whole lot easier to take photos without a head, arm or shoulder poking you or getting in the way of the shot!

Let the journey begin. . . . .

Our scouts were hunting left and right

We were barely out of the dock and around the first corner, when we got extremely lucky. Always look for the birds circling close to the water. They are hoping for scraps or any confused fish they can get for easy pickings!

In this case, we got to see an extremely rare even for just two whales. It was called bubble net feeding. Humpbacks have the longest fin of any whale.

 

Check out the glaciers in the mountains behind the whales!!

It appeared we had a happy couple working together. One was definitely larger than the other- maybe a mom and child, since the whales stay with their mom for over a year 
Humpback whales give birth to a calf every two to three years.

The top of the head and lower jaw have rounded, bump-like knobs, each containing at least one stiff hair.

Tubercles (also known as stovebolts) are small bumps found on the head of Humpback whales with sensory hairs (bristles) protruding from them. The knobs are thought to be sensory nodules

HUMPBACK WHALES
(Megaptera novaeangliae)
 

Here you can see the ring of bubbles made by one of the whales and the flipper from the other to concentrate their prey (fish or krill) inside.

One of the whales blows air from their blowhole while underwater forming a circle.  The other uses his flippers to scatter the fish and send them into the circle.  The bubbles form a net or curtain and the fish get confused and concentrate  in the center.

The prey swim toward the darkest spot, which of course, happens to be the large whale surfacing with his mouth wide open to capture them!!

I think this little fishing boat with father and son is a little too close to the whales. Remember, these animals are 40 ft long and up to 40 tons. They may not really have anything to do with the boat, but if they surfaced and go too close, their tales could cause a lot of damage.

They can never really eat humans. Even though they are extremely large, their tongue is over 2 tons, their throat is the size of a grapefruit, so they have to eat tons of small fish and krill

This produces sound as the bubbles form a cloud. Our boat had an underwater microphone so we could hear the sounds they made. They were incredible. I had a digital camera that takes videos also, so I was able to capture the sounds. The videos are available on the CD.

Every time they came up, it was amazing

The females are slightly larger than males as with all baleen whales

Here he looks like he could swallow Jonah!

The trapped fish  and krill are engulfed by the whales' open mouths as they break the surface of the water.

The air exhaled through the whale's blowholes condenses into water vapor. The blow is quite visible and can reach heights of up to 20 feet!

These Humpbacks spend their winters in the warm tropical waters of Hawaii, but they migrate back thousands of miles to the rich feeding grounds of Alaska to gorge themselves every summer.

We were in a cove that had views of the Mendenhall, Herbert and Eagle glaciers off in the distance.  All of these glaciers flow from the Juneau Ice field.

The flukes (tail),  can be 18 feet (5.5 m) wide, and are serrated and pointed at the tips.

Humpbacks can swallow hundreds of pounds of fish in a short amount of time

Definitely feeding time again and again!

For being so large, they swim side by side quite gracefully also!

In sync

Here is to give you a bit of perception, look how big only a part of the whale looks compared to the boat!

I love watching the water drip off their tails

There used to be over 125,000 humpback whales, but whaling drastically reduced the population. Today humpbacks number approximately 10,000 to 25,000 globally.
 

Mysticeti (baleen whales)
 

It is amazing how they can look so graceful with 40 ft and 40 tons as they slowly slip into the water!  I have seen people at the beach, and they make more splashes than the whales!

We have our little resident sea lion taking a nap from his swim!

What a breathtaking way to end a day!

  They can have 15- to 18-foot-long pectoral fins- ok, I cheated here, these last two photos are from a whale watching tour in Boston, but these still are humpbacks, I just got better photos of their fins. One of the young whales was having a great time splashing, playing  and flirting with the boat!!!!

There are between 20-50 ventral throat grooves or pleats which extend slightly beyond the navel giving the appearance of lines.  You can see them in the photo above.