Clicking on the images in this post will enlarge them for a better viewing experience.

The Tongass/Inside Passage map shown above is annotated with the trip’s approximate adventure route. The base map is courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service.

The trip began in Sitka where I met the rest of the photo workshop group led by professional photographer Juan Pons. Our group of eight boarded the 84-foot expedition yacht, M/V Northern Song operated by Alaska Sea Adventures. This was to be our home for the next nine days and eight nights as we cruised around the Inside Passage embarking in Sitka and disembarking in Petersburg, Alaska.

Our trip was timed to coincide with spring’s herring spawn. During the spawn, herring gather in massive schools to reproduce along the shoreline.

In spring, they migrate shoreward to spawn in shallow vegetated areas in the inter- and subtidal zones. Herring exhibit a diel vertical migration (DVM) pattern in which they hangout near the bottom during the daylight hours and move to shallow water to feed at night. Herring are mass spawners that utilize external fertilization. Once they reach the spawning area, the males and females release their sperm (called milt) and eggs into the water column where they mix and fertilize. The average female lays about 20,000 eggs each year.

Eggs hatch about two weeks after fertilization although the time it takes for hatching is dependent on the water temperature. Juveniles grow in sheltered bays and inlets until fall when schools of them move to deeper offshore water where they will stay until they become sexually mature. Young herring remain separate from the adult population until they reach maturity. Herring are subject to predation by other fish, marine mammals, and birds. During the spring spawn, a myriad of species gather for a herring feast which was the reason for our trip’s timing.

Cetaceans

Cetaceans are aquatic mammals that have torpedo-shaped bodies, often large in size, flat heads and have an almost exclusively carnivorous diet. They spend their entire lives from birth to death in water. They have powerful tails which end in a paddle-like structure called a fluke. An up-and-down movement of the tail is used for propulsion while their flipper shaped forelimbs are used for maneuvering. Cetaceans are known for their high intelligence and complex social behaviors. Whales, dolphins and porpoises are all cetaceans.

There are approximately 89 species of cetaceans split into two groups, the toothed whales and the filter-feeding or baleen whales. Porpoises, dolphins and predatory whales have teeth and are therefore classified as toothed whales. Toothed whales eat fish and other ocean creatures such as squid. Instead of teeth, filter-feeding whales have baleen, which are sieve-like plates made of keratin, in their mouths that are used to strain small creatures such as krill and small invertebrates from the water. On our trip, we saw examples of both the toothed and baleen whales.

Despite their extremely modified bodies and carnivorous lifestyle, genetic and fossil evidence indicates that whales were once even-toed ungulates (hoofed animals that place their weight on the middle two of their five toes). Their closest relative is actually the hippopotamus. Although whales can remain submerged for long periods of time, they evolved from land mammals and have to surface regularly to breathe air. They have modified nostrils on the tops of their heads called blowholes through which air is taken in and expelled.

While most whales prefer to hang out in the cold water regions of the northern and southern hemispheres, they migrate to warm equatorial areas to bear their young. Whales are not monogamous. Males will breed multiple females each year, but a female only mates every 2-3 years. After birthing, the female takes sole responsibility for the rearing of the calf and will nurse it for a year or more.

These are fairly large whales with adult females averaging 49 feet in length and weighing about 35 tons. Males are slightly smaller than females. Humpbacks can be distinguished from other whales by their exceptionally long flippers that can be equal to 25-30% of their total length.

Humpbacks sometimes exhibit surface behaviors such as breaching where they “leap” with at least two-thirds of their bodies out of the water making them popular with whale viewers.

Humpbacks are a migratory species. They spend their summers in temperate and sub-polar water regions where food is abundant, but they breed and calve in tropical and sub-tropical waters. Most of the humpbacks found in Alaskan waters migrate as far as 3,000 miles each way spending their winters in Mexican, Hawaiian or western Pacific waters near Japan.

The lifespan of humpbacks is believed to be 40-50 years. A female becomes sexually mature at age 5 while it takes males seven years. Breeding takes place in tropical waters. After being bred, a female will migrate to a cold water region to feed. Since the gestation period is 11.5 months, the female will migrate back to the tropics to give birth to a single calf that will be 10-15 feet long weighing about 1.5 tons and will nurse the calf for six months to a year. A female will give give birth every 2-3 years.

Humpback whales are generalist filter feeders primarily eating krill and small schooling fish. They feed from spring through fall and live off their fat when breeding and calving. To feed, a humpback will open its large mouth taking in huge amounts of water along with anything swimming in it. When the whale closes its jaw, water is forced out through the baleen plates trapping the prey inside. A humpback will eat up to 1.5 tons of food per day!

While humpbacks tend to be primarily solitary, they do participate in groups for short periods of time. In summer, they tend to spend longer times in groups to participate in cooperative foraging and feeding. These groups often use a strategy called bubble net feeding in which the group will swim in circles beneath their prey releasing air bubbles which concentrate the prey. The whales will then quickly head open mouthed to the surface filling their mouths with water concentrated with prey.

The major predator for humpbacks in the past has been humans who hunted them nearly to extinction. The population dipped to about 5,000 individuals worldwide in the 1960s. A moratorium on commercial harvesting was put into effect in 1985 and has allowed the species to begin to recover. It is believed that the population has now grown to about 135,000 individuals worldwide.

Humpbacks are predominately black with varying amounts of white on their throats, bellies, flippers and flukes.

In the past, scientists would spend hours trying to manually match photographs of an observed individual with a catalog of thousands of photos to identify it which allowed them to study things such as migration patterns. This type of analysis was very time consuming. In 2015 an organization called Happywhale was formed to serve as a repository for globally collected sighting data of cetacean species. They developed an automated image recognition algorithm called WhaleID which uses machine learning to allow people to match their whale sighting photos with those in a database for quick identification and obtain a listing of where all the sightings catalogued for a particular whale have occurred.

Our trip naturalist, whose passion is whales, logged all our humpback whale sightings with Happywhale. The map below shows sightings logged with Happywhale during the duration of our trip.

The next image focuses on the two of our whale sightings that I have circled in red on the map above.

Very quickly the algorithm matched our uploaded fluke photo with the humpback whale database and returned information about our whale whose name is Whangara.

Clicking on the whale name link brings up more information on this whale.

It was fun to learn about the various humpbacks we encountered using Happywhale.

Gray whales are known for their curiosity toward boats which makes them popular with whale watchers. We came upon a group of “friendlies” that wanted to interact with our tender boats. All the photos in this post were taken from my tender with our second tender in the picture. The photo above shows the head of one of the gray whales.

Most of the whales of the eastern population (“our” whales) spend summers feeding in the northern Bering and Chukchi seas. They then migrate south to winter and calve off the coast of Baja California and Mexico. Grays make one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal, typically traveling about 10,000 or more miles round-trip. Our friendlies were a group of males that were migrating northward to their summer feeding grounds.

Whale lice are actually tiny crustaceans that are very specialized in that they only live on the skin of slow-moving baleen whales. They do not seem to harm the whales.

Gray whales are primarily bottom feeders that suck sediments and food (mainly invertebrates) into their mouths from the ocean floor which is then filtered through their baleen plates. They often leave “feeding pits” on the seafloor.

We spent several wonderful hours one afternoon cruising about in our tenders in the company of gray whales. It was an amazing experience.

Orcas are readily recognized by their distinctive black-and-white color pattern of a black top with white underside and white patch above and behind the eye along with the presence of a prominent dorsal fin.

Females can have lifespans of 50 years while males are more in the 30 year range.

Although as a species, orcas are generalist carnivores eating fish, seals, sea lions, other dolphins, porpoises, sharks, large whales, squid, seabirds, etc., they have evolved into two ecotypes. An ecotype is a distinct group or race of an animal species that occupies a particular habitat. Orca pods that are permanent residents of the northeastern Pacific including the Inside Passage of southeastern Alaska are fish eaters while pods of transients eat mainly marine mammals. The orcas that we encountered on this trip were transients.

Orca use echolocation for hunting in which the sound waves they emit travel underwater until objects or prey are encountered. The sound waves then bounce back rendering details such as location, size and shape of the object. They also use this communication in cooperative hunting.

Orca are apex predators meaning that they are at the very top of the food chain. They are too large and powerful to be prey for any other species and therefore have no predators. Despite the name killer whale, orca are not hunters of humans. There has only been one recorded attack on a human in the wild.

You may wonder what the difference is between a dolphin and a porpoise. Dolphins are not types of porpoises, and porpoises are not types of dolphins. They are not the same thing although people tend to use the names interchangeably (and incorrectly). They are separate groups of cetaceans, each including multiple species. Both are classified as toothed whales, are highly intelligent, social (although dolphins are more extroverted around humans than porpoises are), and use echolocation for hunting prey and locating members of their group. For those of my generation reading this, Flipper the star of the mid-1960s tv show of the same name (and one of my favorite shows as a kid) was a bottlenose dolphin well known for his facial grin.

The differences between dolphins and porpoises are notable primarily in their faces, fins and figures. Dolphins have elongated beak-like snouts full of cone-shaped teeth. Porpoises have rounded faces and no beak with spade-shaped teeth. Of course if you are able to check out the teeth for ID purposes, you are probably too close! Dolphins have hook-shaped dorsal fins while those of the porpoise tend to be considerably smaller and triangular in shape. Dolphins have leaner bullet shaped bodies while porpoises have round, portly bodies. Dolphins can move their heads from side-to-side independent of the rest of their bodies (a behavior often seen on Flipper) while porpoises cannot due to having fused vertebrae in their necks. Dolphins are larger averaging 6-12 feet in length (the orca is an exception) while porpoises top out at about 6 feet in length. There are 32 known species of dolphins widely distributed geographically but preferring temperate and tropical waters while there are only 7 known species of porpoises found mostly in the colder waters of the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Dall’s porpoise has the distinctive color pattern of a black body with a conspicuous white lateral patch on the left, right, and underside along with contrasting white markings on the dorsal fin and tail. Unlike the orca, their dorsal fins are triangle-shaped; they do not have eye patches or saddle patches; and are tiny in comparison.

One morning while cruising along, we were visited by a small pod of Dall’s porpoises. They love to play by swimming in front of the bow or in the wake along side a boat. They are impossible to photograph. I took 170 photos with only 2-3 remotely looking like they were of a porpoise! The one above was the best of my attempts. I did, however, capture a video of the swimming porpoises which, when combined with the photo above, gives you an idea of what a Dall’s porpoise looks like.

Pinnipeds

“Pinniped” means fin- or flipper-footed and refers to a group of aquatic mammals having both front and rear flippers that live in the ocean but come onto land for significant periods of time. The pinnipeds are divided into three groups: earless or true seals (phocid family), eared seals (otariid family) and walruses (odobenids). Phocids are characterized by having ear holes but no ear flaps and small front flippers which are useless for terrestrial locomotion. They can only move on land by flopping along on their bellies. Otariids have external ear flaps and large front flippers which they can place under their bodies to allow them to “walk” on land. Odobenids have tusks and vacuum-like mouths for sucking up shellfish from the ocean floor. The walrus is the only member of the odobenid family. On our journey, we saw earless and eared seals. I have yet to see a walrus in the wild.

Steller sea lions inhabit the colder temperate to subarctic waters of the North Pacific Ocean and require both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. They need land for resting, molting, socializing, mating, giving birth, and nursing pups during the breeding season. Steller sea lions are closely related to the smaller California sea lion found in the Pacific Northwest and California. Steller sea lions were important to indigenous peoples and settlers who hunted them for their meat, hides, and oil. These sea lions remain an important subsistence resource for Alaska Natives today.

There are two distinct populations of Steller sea lions that differ both genetically and morphologically. The western distinct population segment (WDPS) come from breeding rookeries west of Cape Suckling (144° west longitude) while the eastern DPS are from rookeries east of Cape Suckling. The WDPS is considered endangered.

Steller sea lions are sexually dimorphic with adult males being considerably larger than females. Males can be as large 11 feet long and 2,500 pounds while females are 7-9 feet long and weighing up to 800 pounds. 

Steller sea lions are colonial breeders with a polygynous mating system where only a small percentage of the sexually mature males father most of the pups in a given season. Males become sexually mature between 3 and 8 years of age. They establish breeding territories and are typically not physically big enough to successfully maintain a breeding territory until they are 9-10 years old. A male may have to go without eating for 1-2 months during breeding season while he defends his territory.

Females typically give birth to their first pup when they are between 4 and 6 years of age. They are able to produce one pup per year although they may not give birth every year. Customarily, a female will be bred within 2 weeks of giving birth. A pup typically will be about 3 feet long, weigh 35-50 pounds, and be dark brown in color. Between 4-6 months the pup will molt and become lighter brown.

In a rookery filled with pups, the mother recognizes her own pup by smell and by very distinct vocalizations. Pups are typically weaned by the time they reach a year old, but some can nurse for as long as 3 years.

Sometimes, you will see a sea lion holding one or more of their flippers out of the water while they are floating. This is done for thermoregulation purposes. The flippers are poorly insulated with blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. By extending their flippers into the air, they can absorb heat which is then circulated to the rest of the body.

Harbor seals are smaller than Steller sea lions weighing up to 285 pounds and being up to 6 feet long. Males are slightly larger than females, but there is not a huge difference. The pelvic bones of these seals are fused which prevents them from moving their hind flippers under the pelvis to walk on land like the sea lions. They have to move in an undulating caterpillar-like motion called galumphing.

The harbor seal diet consists mainly of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans, and they forage in both shallow and deep waters.

Harbor seals reach sexual maturity between 3 and 7 years of age. Interestingly mating takes place in the water. The gestation period is 10 months. New born seal pups weigh about 24 pounds and are able to swim within minutes of birth. Mothers nurse the pups for 4 to 6 weeks on milk that is 50 percent fat.

I did not take many photos of harbor seals on this trip because I commonly photograph them at home.

Mustelids

The mustelids or weasel family consists of fur-bearing carnivorous mammals such as weasels, badgers, wolverines, minks and otters. Most mustelids have long tube-shaped bodies with short legs, and short rounded ears. Of the over 50 types of mustelids that exist, 11 are found in North America.

Unlike seals and sea lions, sea otters do not have any blubber, so they have to depend on exceptionally thick, water-resistant fur to stay warm in their cold water habitat.

The warmth of their fur almost caused the demise of these adorable animals as they were hunted nearly to extinction to make coats and hats!

Dense fur is, however, not enough to keep them warm. Sea otters groom air bubbles into their fur which provides extra insulation. About 10% of an otter’s daily activity is spent maintaining this layer of trapped air. Their body heat warms the trapped air and further insulates them providing four times as much insulation as an equal thickness of fat would provide. The heat-generating metabolic rate of these otters, when resting, is three times greater than other mammals of similar size. To fuel this high rate of metabolism, northern sea otters have to eat about 25% of their body mass daily. Contrast this with humans who only need to eat about 2% of their body mass daily.

Sea otters forage in relatively shallow coastal waters diving to the bottom to catch their prey which consists primarily of sea urchins, crabs, clams, mussels, and other marine invertebrates. The air in their fur makes it difficult to do deep diving.

Female sea otters reach sexual maturity at 2–5 years of age and males at 4–6 years of age. Sea otters can breed any time of year, but there is often delayed implantation of the fertilized egg so that the pup can be born at an appropriate time of year for rearing. At birth a pup will typically be 2 feet long and weigh 3-5 pounds.

The pup rides and nurses on the mother’s chest until it is weaned. At birth the thick coat of baby fur that the mother fills with air makes the pup so buoyant it is unable to go below the surface of the water. When diving for food, the female leaves her pup floating in the water, typically wrapped in kelp so it will not float away.

Terrestrial Mammals

While on the water, we occasionally saw some mammals on the shorelines.

Instead, Sitka black-tails are browsers that eat the leaves and stems of woody plants and shrubs. These deer do graze on emerging sedges on beaches during a brief time in the spring which is where we saw this one.

Despite their name, black bears come in a variety of colors including brown or cinnamon with black being the most common color. In spring, black bears can be found on low elevation south-facing slopes, and in riparian forests and wetlands looking for early green vegetation and moose. Our trip coincided with the time that bears were just starting to emerge from hibernation. We spotted this one wandering along the shore.

These goats are well adapted for harsh winter conditions having a long, shaggy winter coat which they shed in June. We were fortunate to catch these goats still in their plush coats.

Birds

We saw a variety of aquatic birds on our journey. I will describe just a few that I particularly liked.

Along with whales, the bald eagle was the wildlife species most highly sought on this trip, and we were not disappointed. We spent a number of hours on two separate days photographing eagles.

The bald eagle became the national emblem over the objections of Benjamin Franklin who preferred the wild turkey instead. Sometimes bald eagles, rather than catching their own fish, will steal the catches of other birds, particularly osprey, by harassing them in the air until they drop the catch which the eagle snatches out of the air. It is this behavior that caused Franklin in 1784 to write to his daughter: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. … Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District.” The last part of that statement comes from the fact that, like owls, bald eagles are often harassed by groups of smaller birds. I, for one, am glad the eagle is our symbol rather than a turkey!

Worldwide, there are about 60 species of eagles of which eight are classified as sea eagles. Sea eagles are associated with water and are primarily fish eaters. The bald eagle is a type of sea eagle.

Bald eagles, while plentiful and strong in the 1700s, teetered on the brink of extinction after World War II. In 1963, only 417 nesting pairs were known to exist. So where did they go?

Although they are consumers of fish and carrion, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, bald eagles were incorrectly perceived as a threat to domestic livestock and often shot in the contiguous U.S. region. Since an eagle can lift only about three or four pounds off the ground, it is not really much of a threat to livestock so in 1940 Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act prohibiting the killing, selling or possession of these eagles.

In Alaska, the Territorial Legislature, responding to pressure by the salmon and coastal fox farming industries that claimed eagle predation was harming their livelihood (claims later discredited), imposed a bounty on eagles in 1917 which was ended in 1953. Over the 36 years the bounty was in place, 120,195 eagles were killed for whom a bounty was paid and probably many more for which no bounty was paid. Upon statehood in 1959, Alaskan eagles became protected by the Bald Eagle Protection Act. However, despite placing bald eagles under protection, their population continued to precipitously decline.

After WWII, DDT was introduced as a new miracle insecticide to control mosquitoes and other pests. Unfortunately, the DDT and its degradation products washed into water sources where they were absorbed by aquatic plants and animals. Biomagnification is a process in which chemicals transfer from lower level organisms to higher level organisms in the food chain. This results in the toxins increasing at each level until they reach disastrously high concentrations in apex predators like the bald eagle who consume large quantities of the organisms below them in the food chain (pelicans and osprey were affected as well). DDT and its degradation products accumulate in the fatty tissues of birds and are not eliminated. While the DDT did not directly kill eagles, it interfered with their ability to properly produce eggshells. The eggshells were so thin that they often were broken during the incubation period resulting in few chicks hatching. In 1967, bald eagles south of the 40th parallel were listed as endangered. After DDT and related pesticides were banned in 1972, populations started to rebound, and, in 2007, the bald eagle was removed from the endangered list. This is one of the most notable successes of species recovery.

We had the good fortune to see many eagles on this trip and capture action shots of them flying, diving and fishing. The following two photos were taken sequentially about a tenth of a second apart of an eagle diving for a fish. The attempt was successful as the eagle snagged a herring.

Here are a few more photos of eagles:

This is the final installment on my trip exploring the Tongass National Forest via the Alaskan Inside Passage. If you have an interest in photographing wildlife, I recommend you check out Juan Pons’ Photo Workshops. I have yet to be disappointed in any of the wildlife-seeking adventures I have taken with him. The first post on my Tongass National Forest adventure: Alaska’s Inside Passage. Part 1 Cruising the Tongass describes the amazing scenery of this part of southeast Alaska. I had never lived aboard an expedition yacht for an extended period of time before, and the experience was so much fun that I can’t wait to explore Katmai National Park by boat again while looking for photogenic wildlife in a few months. This was an awesome trip, and I hope that you enjoyed coming along through my photos.