Icy Point Whale Watching

Today was Whale Watching at a new cruise port, Icy Straight Point. This is a private, native indian funded port and only 3 ships a week call at it. No cruise ship dock as of yet so we needed to tender in. The advantages of a small ship were evident today: no wait to tender to shore or back to the ship and only 50 people on the whale watching excursion on a boat with a capacity of 150 so we had a lot of room to move around and get in position for good shots.
Below are three Humpback whale pictures I've picked as my pictures of the day. The first is two whales blowing at the same time, the second is an enlargement of my best "tail shot", and the third shows different tail coloration.
The weather was pretty miserable - intermittent rain and temperature in the mid 50's. Had to take great care to keep the camera lens dry. But all in all, it was rather thrilling. I sure appreciated the 12x zoom on my camera! The boat had to stay at least 100 yards away by regulation.
Below you can see evidence that the coloration of humpback tails is unique to each individual whale. The boat had a chart of known whales and their tail markings. The last picture is a shot of whale 445 with a nearly all white under-tail but it's not quite in focus so I can't zoom in on it very well.


In addition to 40+ pictures I shot a dozen videos, some of which turned out pretty good but will need some editing so I won't be posting them until I get back home.
The crew reported that we had 12 active whales today, an unusually high number.
All in all, in spite of the inclement weather, it was a good day and a great excursion.
This evening as we headed to Glacier Bay, our ship passed the same whale watching area. We had some great whale sightings this evening, including two whales that jumped out of the water! We also saw some sea lions pass very close to the ship as well as a humpback whale that surfaced just 50' from our balcony.