bubble net feeding – Riveted

Codville Lagoon to Fury Cove (and Humpbacks!) | BC

Laura Domela — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 19:24:45 +0000

Today’s plan was to meet up with our friends on Dawnbreaker down at the Koeye River inlet. The Koeye River is a very good place to watch grizzlies, and the anchorage there is decent for a temporary stop in relatively calm conditions. It was beautiful in Codville Lagoon this morning, but the further south we went, the more fog we encountered.

Entering the bay at the Koeye River Inlet:

Dawnbreaker was already anchored and their dinghy was gone, so we assumed they were already up river. We launched our dinghy and headed out to meet them (and hopefully spot some brown bears!)

Long house on shore:

Airship, anchored:

Our Torqeedo had other plans for us, however. It quit abruptly as we were headed into the river and gave us an error message. E23. Kevin messed with it for a few minutes as we were pushed around by the waves coming in from Fitz Hugh Sound. I turned us around and started rowing back toward Airship while he worked to see if he could recalibrate and clear the error, but to no avail. We got back to Airship and brought the electronic tiller part in and did some troubleshooting and determined that somehow, water had gotten in where it shouldn’t be. We messed with it for about an hour, and decided to bag it on the river trip. Being stuck up river with grizzlies and only oars didn’t sound awesome and it was 2pm already. Our plan was to get to Fury Cove so we could do our Cape Caution crossing tomorrow…and we still had about 3 hours to go. We tried radioing our friends to let them know the deal, but didn’t get ahold of them. (We figured we’d just get them on the radio once they were back.)

Back out in Fitz Hugh Sound the fog cleared a bit and once we were past Hakai Pass the seas calmed to rippled for the rest of our cruise down to Fury Cove. We’d seen the occasional humpback in Fitz Hugh, but mostly too far for much detail. Just outside of Fury Cove as we were about to turn in…humpbacks! Several of them were directly in our path.

We watched them for about 10 minutes and then just as we decided we could get past them easily and go into Fury Cove….they started bubble net feeding. This is the very first bubble feeding we’ve seen all summer, and happens right here in front of our anchorage! I took way too many photos. Hopefully that’s what you want to see right now:

The bubble circle just before the whales come up through it:

This close to Airship:

You never know where they’re going to come up. (Actually, you do if you watch the birds.)

We watched them for over an hour. The light was so great…bubble feeding at golden hour! We watched across the channel as another boat (Bonaventure, heading to Seattle) made its way toward us (with spouts and breaching and tail-slapping humpbacks between us and them…busy whale day today!) They stopped when they got close and we both watched the bubble feeding for a while before heading into the cove to anchor.

We’re the only two boats in here, and it’s just gorgeous.

Oh and…guess what? We can hear whales from our boat!

Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty chill, so we’re planning to leave just before sunrise (6:30am or so) for what will likely be a foggy crossing of Cape Caution.

The Ditch and The Payoff (Spoiler: More Humpbacks!)

Laura Domela — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 22:16:27 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska (and BC)

Prince Rupert (AK) — Lowe Inlet (BC) — Khutze Inlet (BC) — Jackson Passage (BC) — Shearwater (BC)

Sunday was a 58 mile day and a good chunk of it was in Grenville Channel. Grenville Channel is a 42-mile long narrow channel that locals call “The Ditch”. It can be rather boring. On our way up to Alaska it was not boring (even though it kinda was) because “Hey! We’re going to Alaska!!” but on Sunday, it was a bit boring. It was rainy and foggy and so there was not much scenery. The scenery in the first place is pretty much just trees and waterfalls which, yes, I know, is nice…there’s just not that much variety. Anyway, I didn’t take many photos because it was kind of a boring cruise day.

Here’s a container ship being loaded (or offloaded, I couldn’t tell) as we left Prince Rupert. Needs a little off the starboard side, or more on port.

There were three other boats in Lowe Inlet where we anchored for the night…all boats we’d seen before this summer (some a few times): a big yachty-yacht called Serengeti, a Nordhavn called Arcadia II, and a super cute wooden boat called Poplar:

We got underway first thing and headed the rest of the way down Grenville Channel and toward a spot we picked that we hadn’t been before (therefore skipping Bishop Hot Springs…awwwww): Khutze Inlet. It sounded really pretty and was about 50 miles, so another day of making miles.

Leaving Lowe Inlet on Monday morning:

The weather was again rainy and gray and often foggy, and so there was even less scenery than the day before, and a few times we just looked at each other and shrugged. We haven’t had many (if any) boring cruise days, but we were feeling the boredom of The Ditch, for sure.

As we neared a little cove toward the south end of Grenville, Kevin spotted a few humpbacks. Yay! Wildlife! Then, he said “Hey, what is that bubbling? Is it just whales hanging out on the surface?”

Nope.

And so began the HOURS of humpbacks bubble feeding that we happily added on to our long day of making miles, as we slowly paralleled three (maybe four?) separate groups of humpbacks, bubble net feeding. This was the best yet.

Bubble net feeding is a really cool cooperative feeding thing that humpbacks do, where a group of whales swim in a shrinking circle blowing bubbles beneath a school of fish. This shrinking column of bubbles surrounds the school of fish and forces them up to the surface where the humpbacks then eat 'em all up.

We could SEE the circles of bubbles long before the whale mouths punched through the surface…over and over and over and OVER again. It was insane. And for a total change up, Kevin took stills with my (sad, disabled) Nikon (and then I processed them and made ‘em all shiny), and I shot video with my iPhone (and Kevin edited the video together and made IT all shiny). First, here’s the video:

And here are some stills (circle forming, the first whale's fin punches through the water's surface on the right):

I'd trade 42 miles of boring fog and limited scenery for a couple of hours of that, wouldn't you?

Well, we finally had had enough of all this bubble feeding nonsense (not at all) and broke away (after about 23 “okay just one more”s) so we could get to our next anchorage before dark.

We turned into Graham Reach and about 20 minutes later noticed some humpbacks up ahead breaching! Good, because we were getting a little bored. We saw probably a dozen breaches from a distance but didn’t get any photos. We did get a few shots of a pretty active fin-slapper though:

This one would hang out and slap fins on the surface for a while (while two or three others swam nearby) and then twice, just as I thought “okay let’s move on…this is cool but we’ve seen it” the fin slapper would come up and breach RIGHT. THERE. Twice I missed the shot (but saw it with my eyeballs, so that’s cool).

We continued on to Khutze Inlet and anchored on Monday night near the head by the river, then made some sockeye tacos and a salad for dinner. The fog and rain continued, but it cleared enough to get this shot of our neighbor and the giant waterfall:

Whoa! A little bit of (short-lived) blue sky on Tuesday morning:

We left Khutze Inlet and our plan was to head to Rescue Bay, or an anchorage in a little bight in Jackson Passage just before the narrows (before Rescue Bay).

We ended up anchoring on Tuesday night in the little bight (room for about one boat) and it was nice. The wind picked up significantly sometime in the middle of the night, but we were secure and slept well. (Thanks, Rocna!)

This morning we headed for Shearwater. Jackson Narrows was no big deal, then we made our way down Mathieson Channel, through Perceval Narrows (arriving right around slack), then took the Reid Passage shortcut down to Seaforth Channel (where we briefly encountered some 6-8 foot ocean swells making their way in…woohoo!). The rest of the route to Shearwater was fairly calm and just gray and drizzly.

Here are our maps:

Sunday — Prince Rupert to Lowe Inlet (58.5 nautical miles)

Monday — Lowe Inlet to Khutze Inlet (56.5 nautical miles):

Tuesday — Khutze Inlet to unnamed anchorage in Jackson Passage (42.5 nautical miles):

Wednesday/today — Unnamed anchorage in Jackson Passage to Shearwater, BC (34 nautical miles):

From Shearwater we'll continue checking weather and decide when and where to stage for our Cape Caution/Queen Charlotte Sound crossing. We may go to Pruth Bay and wait (where there is also internet) instead of further (closer to the crossing) to Fury Cove (where there is no internet, and where that mean eagle took down Kevin's quadcopter). We'll play it by ear (and by weather) for now.

Hoonah, Elfin Cove, and Bubble Net Feeding Humpbacks

Laura Domela — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 21:26:00 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska

Before we left Hoonah this morning, we went up to Chipper Fish and had breakfast. A local recommended it to us, and specifically, she recommended that we try the “Right On” which was biscuits, covered with mega tots (tater tots kicked up with bacon and green onion), covered with sausage gravy, and topped with a fried egg. We ordered half an order to split, and it was STILL too much. But it was darn good. (One-quarter serving shown in photo below.)

Our cappuccinos came with a nice message, too:

We got back to Airship and waved goodbye to Hoonah (and the internet sucking cruise ship anchored out by the cannery. Seriously, each morning we had great internet until the cruise ship came in, then basically no internet again until the cruise ship left.)

The seas in Icy Strait were relatively smooth and we were cruising along happily when we heard someone talking on the radio about humpbacks bubble net feeding at Pt. Adolphus. We were not far from Pt. Adolphus and could see boats over there, so I upped our RPM to 3200 and we headed for the point. I watched with the binocs and could see the action from afar…super exciting!! Bubble net feeding is something we were really hoping to see while we were up here, and today we spent about two hours watching it.

Bubble net feeding is a cooperative way of feeding where the whales dive down and form a circle, exhaling to create a cylinder of bubbles to trap the fish. The whales then rise up through the circle of bubbles with their mouths wide open catching thousands of fish on the way up, emerging at the surface like a bunch of gigantic baby birds. It’s dramatic and incredible to watch! Here are some photos:

We spent two hours hanging out near Pt. Adolphus with a few other boats coming and going, and then eventually headed on our way toward Elfin Cove. Once while I was sitting out on the bow with my camera, we were just drifting and waiting for the next group of mouths to pop up somewhere, and a humpback came very close to the boat as I watched it pass by. Kevin leaned out and said something like “So, there’s a whale 10 feet from the boat and doesn’t even rate a photo anymore??” Ooops.

This boat got a good view of this one:

We saw quite a few porpoises today, too. Also, otters:

Kevin put a couple lines in the water and fished for about an hour but didn’t catch anything, but we did come upon another feeding humpback (just one this time):

It was off and on cloudy, sunny, rainy today, and made for some beautiful skies:

As we got closer to North Inian Pass at the Inian Islands, we started getting some smooth ocean swells coming in from the Gulf and Cross Sound. We went through Middle Pass and Mosquito Pass…super scenic! And tons of sea lions on ALL of the rocks:

We heard the small cruise ship Wilderness Explorer telling the AK State Ferry that was heading west through South Inian Pass that there was a pod of orcas near Dad Rock, and we happened to be really close to Dad Rock, so guess what? We finally saw Orcas in Alaska:

The passengers on the ferry got a good view as well:

Near South Inian Pass:

Arriving in Elfin Cove:

The outer public float at Elfin Cove was filled (and boats were rafted three deep…there were maybe only 9 boats…it’s a small float) so we headed into the inner harbor to try our luck. To get to the inner harbor, you go through a narrow, shallow channel. You can kinda see the corner of it here…heading around the boardwalk and then turning to the left.

This is the far end of the inner harbor (where apparently the locals don’t like you to anchor unless the docks are completely full, and really not even then):

We found a spot on one of the floats and asked the local guys working on the boat behind us if it was okay for us to tie up there (they said it was). I’m pretty sure the inner harbor is a “locals only” operation most of the time. I read one review on Active Captain from a cruiser who said they came from Hoonah to Elfin Cove and there was no room for them, so they made the 5 hour trek back to Hoonah.

It’s a little hard to navigate where to go in Elfin Cove because the harbor (in the summer) is super busy with fishing boats and locals and there’s no harbormaster to tell you what you can and can’t do, and there are no signs. But all was cool. We walked up to wander around the boardwalk village and ended up grabbing a beer and some pizza at the only restaurant in town (Coho Bar & Grill). The whole village is connected by boardwalks heading every which way, so we explored a bit more after dinner.

Arriving in Elfin Cove feels like being dropped into a place that was never meant for you. It’s adorable and quirky, but really feels like it exists in a little bubble. The people we’ve run into are nice but a little distant…not at all like that “please, spend money here, we need it” feeling you get in the more tourist-welcoming towns. (They do have a gift shop though, and it’s open until 9pm, so there’s that bit of contradiction.)

Looking toward the inner harbor floats from the boardwalk:

Photos from around ‘town” (which has about 50 residents in the winter):

Not much data or cell service inside the cove here, so we’ll probably do the online part of our work on the way to Pelican tomorrow.