Kodiak Island Boat Tour

Our first full day on Kodiak Island had us up early (for us, 6:30 is early) and off on an 8:00 AM boat tour to Whale Passage. The weather did not bode well right out of the box, as it was very cloudy, foggy, and rainy as we headed to the boat harbor from our B&B. Most of the stuff we would be looking at would be down near the water, and we brought our rain gear, so it did not matter that much, but we would like to have some sun shine to help us get great pictures. Well, at least the water was not too rough, as we would be going mostly through sheltered areas, and the rain let up shortly after we got out onto the Gulf of Alaska.

Soon we were seeing sea birds, kittiwakes, puffins, and pigeon guillemots and were snapping up a storm. I thought that Ken, one of our traveling companions, had super photographic equipment, but two of the guys who came with us on the boat had Nikon D3s and two huge 200-400mm zoom lenses. They spent most of the trip sitting on the bow of the boat and, from the sounds of the shutters, probably took more than 2000 photos each. I thought I came back with a lot at 640. The boat’s captain was pretty good at being able to stealth up on the sea birds, so we were able to get closer than we had on other sight seeing trips. Also, this trip was just for this purpose, where as the others we had taken were mostly to see glaciers, so ocean life photos were just lucky.

As we got out into Whale Passage, the sky actually started to lighten up and we even got to see some blue sky off in the distance and the sun peeked through at us briefly. Strangely enough, although we were in Whale Passage, there were no whales sighted until we started out. Then we did spot one Humpback making its way slowly along the mouth of the passage and feeding lazily. It would float on the surface for a bit and then flute gently for a deeper dive. It did make some rolling motions later on and show its pectoral fins and slap its tail once.

We also saw some Dall’s Porpoises. We had seen them briefly on other tours but this group followed the boat longer than any of the other times. They are very difficult to catch on films as much more than a brief flash of black and white and a splash. Geoff took some video of them and then just pointed the camera over the side and took dozens of pictures as fast as the camera would take them. These are the best.

The stars of the show were the Sea Otters. We caught up with a large raft of them around a small rock island in the middle of Whale Passage and stayed with them for some time. They mostly seemed to be just relaxing and floating. We did not see much eating going on and we did not see any pups.

Finally, when we got back to the harbor, we visited with the Sea Lions who have taken over one of the docks there. They were a little vocal as we cruised around the dock but for the most part, they did not mind our passage. As we exited the boat and walked down the dock, the rain started coming down again. We went to dinner with Ken and Martha and then bid them a fun journey on their next adventure. They are off to the Katmai Peninsula for an expensive tour to see the Kodiak Bears feeding on salmon. We are staying in our B&B, relaxing, and we will go around the island to see whatever there is to see. If anything exciting happens, you will be able to read it here in a later post.