Glacier Bay and the Whales – June 29, 2022

On Wednesday morning at 6 am, two rangers from the Glacier Bay National Park boarded our ship just as we entered approximately 45 miles of bay leading to Margerie Glacier. This is required of all cruise ships entering the park and they narrate your trip up the Bay for several hours. The park is made up of 3.3 million acres of mountains, glaciers, forests, and waterways and is considered a highlight of the Inside Passage. At one point, the entire bay was glacier, and the melting ice is responsible for all the water in the bay. Unlike glaciers in the contiguous U.S., some of these glaciers are retreating and others are advancing.

Notice the blue hue of the ice. Spectacular!

The icebergs floating in the water are chunks of ice breaking off the glacier, called “calfing” and serve as a resting place for wildlife. In fact, we were told that baby seals are placed on these icebergs by their mothers until they develop enough blubber to withstand the cold glacial water temperatures.

Later that same day, we boarded a smaller whale watching boat that took us to a part of Icy Strait where whales are known to feed. All the whales we saw were Humpbacks.

We spent over an hour watching whale after whale blow air through its hole and then dive for a fish dinner. Sometimes, we just saw the back, sometimes, the tail when they dove deeper, and on a few occasions, we actually saw them breach like in the first picture. One thing we learned that we had never experienced before was the breath of a whale. We had turned the boat into the wind and suddenly there was this terrible odor in the air. The guide told us it was the breath of the whale, almost a belch letting out the air in his stomach where all these fish are rotting.

Glad I’m not a whale!