"Whale Watching on Prince William Sound" Top 5 Page for this destination Valdez Things to Do Tip by zrim

Whale watching can be tedious--but I also find it oddly exilerating. Basically, this is the scenario: You catch sight of a black speck in the distance. The captain guns the motor and steers towards the point the whale was last seen. You look at the point where the whale was last seen and then someone catches sight of it 180 degrees in the opposite direction. The captain guns the boat for the point where the whale last went down and you wait around again for another five or ten minutes.

However, there is something thrilling when the captain has cut the motor and the whale surfaces within a few hubdred yards. The roar of the ocean parting so that the great animal can catch a few breaths is like no other experience in the world. I can only imagine the thrill of a full breach by a creature as large and magnificent as the humpback.

In our case, we saw several flukes, which is the whale showing its tail as it goes down for perhaps a ten to fifteen minute dive.

By the way, whales eat mostly krill, plankton and extremely small fish. It couldn't choke down a sea otter if it wanted to. Amazingly enough, a humpback can go through two tons of krill in a day. The Alaskan seas are just teeming with life.