Auke Bay is located a little bit north of Juneau. It’s a harbor with both pleasure and fishing boats moored there.

We took a bus up there from the cruise dock. This is where we caught our boat to go whale watching. We boarded a jet boat and went out into the bay.

We kept looking around. It didn’t take long and we saw it, the spray from a whale spouting! After the spout, we saw the whale’s dorsal fin break the surface of the water. Our boat pilot took us out near the spot. It didn’t take long before we saw maybe a dozen or so whales in the area surrounding us. The boats are prohibited from going within 100 yards of the whales, but occassionally a whale would surface near our boat.

The thrill of hearing the sound of the whale exhaling, and then watching the whale’s back slide along the surface of the water is a thrill that is difficult to describe.

We managed to see a whale breach, or jump out of the water. We also saw several tail flukes come up out of the water as well. It all happens so fast that it is hard to catch very much of it with a camera, especially a digital camera.