This guy and some buddies were swimming around near the ship the other day while we were out running the boats. Every once in a while they'd pause in their diving and just hang out watching us, not unlike the way we were watching them. We've seen a couple of pods of dolphins and lots of whales, some surfacing just feet in front of the ship. I'd love to get a picture of them but when they're that close I'm more concerned about stopping the ship and not hitting the big lugs than I am about pulling the camera out. Whales and ships don't mix, and while ships win in just about any encounter, it's not something any of us want. Avoidance is the name of the game.
Some Animals
With our serious bandwidth limitations, I can really only upload a few pictures at a time, and those have to be small. Fortunately, I have some smaller file sizes, so that's what I'll share first.
Puffin! There were lots of them, but they all had their backs turned to us.
Saw this guy from the bridge wing as we pulled in. I have more pictures from different angles but the otters are pretty much all adorable from every angle.
A family of bears - most of the ones we saw were at a distance, which wasn't great for photographs, but did give a great sense of scale.
Hungry!
When you see this on the water, it only means one thing...
Hungry fish!
See the guy there in the center? Someone told me these are blackfin tuna, but I have no idea.
I do know that where you find them, you find the fishing dhows, although there are fewer and fewer of them as winter sets in here. It's still in the 70s during the day, but slips down to the 50s at night and will get colder as we move north.
Dolphins En Masse
The other day we were cruising around when we noticed the birds were feeding nearby and the water was ruffled. When we got closer, we realized we were nearing a huge pod of dolphins. Usually they're interested in the ship, and a couple of them came closer, but we were going slow and not creating enough of a bow wake to really keep them occupied. And it looks like they'd found a great food source because they were very focused on their hunting. I got a few closer shots where you could really see the individuals, but then you couldn't see them as a group, so I opted for the longer shot.
Another Replenishment at Sea
But this one had dolphins! Marine mammals playing in the
bow waves is something that never gets old.
After a Long Hiatus
A dolphin!
We went out for a pre-deployment shakedown run this morning and on the way out we ran into a pod of dolphins. I didn't get any great shots, but hey - a day at sea and dolphins go together like peanut butter and jelly.
