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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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  • I became very familiar with the individual whales that made up the cooperative bubblenet feeding groups. I could identify them by their flukes, markings on their throats, barnacles and even sometimes by the sounds they made.<br />
I had known Dr Fred Sharpe of the Alaska Whale Foundation for many years during his research into the cooperative bubble net feeding strategies employed by the humpback whales of Southeast Alaska. He was particularly interested in the genetic relatedness of individual whales within and between cooperative pods, in addition to the local genetic sub-structuring of the population. He discovered that social foraging humpback whale pods possess a social complexity that is rarely observed in baleen whales. For example, individuals within these groups may develop long-term associations that may last for many years. There also appears to be a division of labour, with particular whales constantly leading the group, deploying the bubble nets, and producing the feeding calls. Furthermore, on each lunge, each whale in the group maintains the same position, indicating that this is an intrinsically choreographed feeding maneuver. My own personal observations with the same feeding groups over the course of the summer also bore this out. I observed how there were always core members of a group but other individual whales appeared to join them on a much more ad hoc basis before moving off again.<br />
He ascertained that it is only the more elusive, shoaling prey, such as Pacific herring, that require the same level of cooperative cohesiveness; easier prey such as krill do not require the same sophisticated feeding strategies as do shoaling fish.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet15.jpg
  • This was one of the most unusual pods of bubble net feeding whales because of the appearance of some of their flukes every time they lunged to the surface. The co-operative feeding groups that use bubble nets to catch herring are very cohesive teams of individuals that feed together every summer, and their herding and feeding manoeuvres are tightly choreographed for maximum efficiency. This is the only pod that I witnessed using their flukes in this manner as part of their strategy.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet24.jpg
  • The seabirds were such an integral part of my experiences with bubble net feeding whales. They followed the feeding whales just as tirelessly as I did from dawn to dusk, and probably beyond. I sometimes relied on them as an early-warning system to indicate where the whales were going to be surfacing, although quiet a lot of times there were false alarms and sometimes there were two different "opinions' going in opposite directions. It wasn't so important to watch them if it was calm because I could usually see the circle of bubbles on the surface, and estimate where the middle of the bubble net was. It was then just a matter of trying to stay as close to the bubbles as possible to avoid the centre where they would be surfacing. But sometimes if the sea was a bit choppy it became a bit more ambiguous because I couldn't tell which way the circle was curving. The best indicators if ever they were around were the sea lions, that always knew exactly where the whales were underwater.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet4.jpg
  • This photo clearly illustrates how distended the whales’ throat becomes when they lunge to the surface. They can dislocate their jaws like a snake does, and when they first reach the surface their jaws are open almost a full 180 degrees and their throat-poach hangs from their lower jaw like the throat-pouch of a pelican. The colouration of the throats varies and it was another means of identifying individuals. The open ventral pleats of this one appear to be pink because of the lack of pigmentation revealing the blood-rich tissue beneath. They really are a curious sight when their throats are fully distended like that, and they reminded me of Jabba the Hutt from the Star Wars movies.<br />
The formation of this bubble net feeding group also shows how there is always at least one lead whale that surfaces vertically, while the rest appear in a more lateral position around it. The individual whales that are regular members of the feeding group always maintain the same position in the tightly choreographed arrangement during the feeding ascent.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet3.tif
  • This was another photo taken by Francois Gohier when we were both photographing bubble net feeding humpback whales on the Morris Reef, near Point Hayes. I was very familiar with the underwater topography around the Morris Reef and became very good at predicting the movement of the feeding whales along it as they herded the herring. The main problem there was the sea conditions because it is near the junction of Peril Strait and Chatham Strait, so there are usually very strong currents and any wind can exacerbate the conditions as well.
    Alaska-camping-kayaking21.jpg
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, I You Seen Cove, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet30.jpg
  • This was the cooperative bubble net feeding group of 5 whales that regularly frequented the Morris Reef and I had many close encounters with. This photo clearly illustrates the structure and function of the baleen plates hanging from the roof of the whales’ mouth: they are smooth on the outside and frayed and bristly on the inside, thus creating a dense mat of coarse hairs to prevent any prey from escaping. The clearly defined palette in the roof of the mouth is also visible as is the common, distinctive pink “moustache” marking on the snout.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet12.jpg
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, Morris Reef, Point Hayes, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet26.jpg
  • This was the place where I observed and photographed their spectacular cooperative feeding using a bubble net the most. Their baleen plates can clearly be seen in this photo. They have about 330 pairs of dark gray baleen plates with coarse gray bristles on the inside hanging from the jaws. They are about 25 inches (0.6 m) long and 13.5 inches (34 cm) wide. They act as filters to trap their prey when they shut their mouths and expel the water.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet1.jpg
  • This was a typical bubble net feeding group with a permanent core of six individuals, but the size of the group would sometimes expand to about ten with the arrival of “guests”.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet18.jpg
  • This was the photo that won the Mammal Behavior Category in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition in 2002. It wasn’t until after I attended the award ceremony at the Natural History Museum that I discovered that many of the judges were unhappy that it wasn’t awarded the title of the overall winner of the competition, and I subsequently discovered that that was the general public consensus as well. It was unfortunate that the controversy that surrounded the overall winner that year soured such a proud moment in my photographic career. I was contacted a few years later by the new head of the judging panel, Mark Carwardine, to ask for any guidelines for submitting a winning photo, because he felt that my photo was the best entry that year. C’est la vie !<br />
But the moment that can never be diminished or tainted was the moment that I captured the image. I was photographing a bubble net feeding group very near the community of Tenakee Springs, which can be seen to the left of the whale. They came up behind me and I can clearly remember zooming my lens back so that I could fit the entire throat of the whale into the photo, and fortunately I was just able to do that or else it might not have been a perfect award-winning photo.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet33.jpg
  • It seemed like there was an ever-increasing number of pleasure boats every year from the early days when sometimes I was blissfully alone with the whales all day. There was an increasing number of whale-watching boats as well as research boats; on one occasion i witnessed twenty different boats surrounding a pod of bubble netting whales. Most of the time the whales just continued their behaviour uninterrupted, but sometimes I witnessed them aborting their lunging and moving away to get away from a particularly noisy and intrusive boat, which included a research boat on one occasion.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet28.jpg
  • The left eye of the whale in the foreground is clearly visible and shut. The whales are lunging at such close proximity that they usually close their eyes to protect them from any damage, particularly from the flippers that are usually heavily encrusted with barnacles. Whales that are regular members of these teams of bubble net feeders are very distinctive because of all of the scratches inflicted on their bodies by barnacles.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet16.jpg
  • There is so much power when the whales explode to the surface when they are feeding cooperatively with bubble nets. I could almost feel the energy being transmitted through the air and water when they exploded to the surface like this.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet5.jpg
  • Sometimes the cooperative feeding group would surface unexpectedly. If the sea was calm and there were plenty of seabirds around to help me to track the whales then it was easier, but if it was more difficult to see the bubbles on the surface or there were distracting sounds of boat engines in the vicinity then anything could happen, and on this occasion the whales exploded out of the water right behind me and I barely had enough time to swivel around to take a photo.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet21.jpg
  • This was the "Famous Five" group of bubble netters that I became so familiar with around the Morris Reef at Point Hayes. I became familiar with all of their physical differences like the colouration and markings under their throats. The one on the left was the most distinctive with its pink throat and the circular scars where barnacles had dropped off; it was always one of the lead whales that lunged vertically. Humpback whales are usually identified by the distinctive colouration, markings and scars on the ventral side of the flukes. I could also identify them by the distinctive sound of each blow: some are more explosive: some more guttural: some sound like a ricochet: some are more like sneezes.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet7.jpg
  • This feeding group clearly illustrates a typical formation with either one or two lead whales ascending vertically out of the water and the rest surfacing on their sides. Sometimes there was more than one lead whale, but quite often it was just one.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet19.jpg
  • Here is one member of the “Fantastic Five”, as I dubbed them, feeding on the Morris Reef. It clearly illustrates the moment when the whale shuts its jaws very quickly and firmly, and any water contained is forcefully ejected out through the baleen plates, and any prey is trapped inside its mouth. Also clearly visible are the distinctive bumps or “tubercles” on the rostrum of a humpback whale that are found on no other species of whale. Each tubercle has a small hair or “vibrissae”, that probably act like whiskers as sensory organs for detecting their prey.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet10.jpg
  • This photo shows how much the whales' jaws are distended when lunge feeding like this. A solitary Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) can be seen in the middle as well as the bristles on the inside of the baleen plates.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet11.jpg
  • Humpback whales generally have heavy encrustations of barnacles on their throats, pectoral fins and flukes. Whale barnacles are barnacles belonging to the family Coronulidae. Whale barnacles attach themselves to the bodies of baleen whales during the barnacles's free-swimming larval stage. Though often described as parasites, the relationship is an example of obligate commensalism, as the barnacles neither harm, nor benefit, their host. But they are parasitised by whale lice that are actually amphipods: tiny crustaceans that feed off dead skin and pieces of flesh from their host. In normal situations, population of these parasites seem to stay in check, thereby not hurting their large hosts. Cetacean cyamid species are specific to different species of cetaceans and the one that lives on humpbacks is Cyamus boopis.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet32.jpg
  • This was my first successful entry in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. I was Highly Commended for this photo of a lunge-feeding whale in the endangered species category in about 1994.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet2.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet29.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet22.jpg
  • This photo illustrates the power of the whales when they surge to the surface. Their gaping jaws, scooping up hundreds of litres of sea water and fish, must exert a tremendous amount of drag. Some of the herring they were pursuing can be see flying through the air to escape their open mouths.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet20.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet17.jpg
  • This photo was taken near the Tlingit village of Kake on Kupreanof Island and illustrates the problems of the practice of clear-cut logging that persisted during the 1980s and 90s when I was based in Southeast Alaska. The extent of clear-cutting was much worse around native communities because the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) awarded approximately 148,500,000 acres (601,000 km2) of Federal land in Alaska to private native corporations which were created under ANCSA. Transference of public National Forest land to a privately owned corporation removes it from protection by Federal law and allows the owners to use the land in whatever way they see fit without regard to the effects of the use on surrounding lands and ecosystems. This fact has caused much controversy involving the business interests of Native Regional Corporations and the personal interests of local Natives and non-Native residents of Southeastern Alaska, such as subsistence hunting and tourism.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet6.jpg
  • The tightly packed baleen plates are clearly visible. They are smooth on the outside, and coarse and bristly on the inside. They have a series of 270-400 fringed overlapping plates hanging from each side of the upper jaw, where teeth might otherwise be located.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet31.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet14.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet23.jpg
  • This is just before its distended throat contracts and the water is forced through its baleen plates as seen in the next photo. Clearly visible are the distinctive bumps or “tubercles” on the rostrum of a humpback whale that are found on no other species of whale. Each tubercle has a small hair or “vibrissae”, that probably act like whiskers as sensory organs for detecting their prey.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet9.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet8.jpg
  • This photo was taken by one of the leading humpback whale researchers in Southeast Alaska at the time, Cynthia D’Vincent. She was actually working with a film crew at the time who were making an IMAX film. We had a lot of encounters during the filming and she pointed out that I was getting into "rather too many" of their shots, and politely asked me if I could try to avoid doing that. I was getting fed up with having to breathe in the exhaust fumes from their fast boats, whilst I was left rocking in their wake. I continued to work in my usual low impact fashion, but eventually they got all of the shots that they needed and I was thanked for obliging with her request, and I was rewarded with a bottle of wine. <br />
The unusual lighting, and atmospheric conditions at sunset, was a result of an extensive forest fire in the Yukon Territory hundreds of miles away to the northeast.
    Alaska-camping-kayaking26.jpg
  • This is looking west towards the end of the inlet.
    Alaska-camping-kayaking25.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet13.jpg
  • Some of the herring they are catching are clearly visible above the lunging whales. This was taken during a period of clear weather when there was a forest fire hundreds of miles away in the Yukon Territory, which created the unusual lighting.
    Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet25.jpg
  • Alaska-humpbackwhale-bubblenet27.jpg
  • Duncan-Murrell-artwork2.jpg
  • Lunge-feeding humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia), Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
I became very familiar with the individual whales that made up the cooperative bubblenet feeding groups. I could identify them by their flukes, markings on their throats, barnacles and even sometimes by the sounds they made.<br />
I had known Dr Fred Sharpe of the Alaska Whale Foundation for many years during his research into the cooperative bubble net feeding strategies employed by the humpback whales of Southeast Alaska. He was particularly interested in the genetic relatedness of individual whales within and between cooperative pods, in addition to the local genetic sub-structuring of the population. He discovered that social foraging humpback whale pods possess a social complexity that is rarely observed in baleen whales. For example, individuals within these groups may develop long-term associations that may last for many years. There also appears to be a division of labour, with particular whales constantly leading the group, deploying the bubble nets, and producing the feeding calls. Furthermore, on each lunge, each whale in the group maintains the same position, indicating that this is an intrinsically choreographed feeding maneuver. My own personal observations with the same feeding groups over the course of the summer also bore this out. I observed how there were always core members of a group but other individual whales appeared to join them on a much more ad hoc basis before moving off again.<br />
He ascertained that it is only the more elusive, shoaling prey, such as Pacific herring, that require the same level of cooperative cohesiveness; easier prey such as krill do not require the same sophisticated feeding strategies as do shoaling fish.
    Humpback whales-4-2.tif
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeanglia) lunging during cooperative feeding using a bubble net, the Morris Reef, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
This was the same cooperative bubble net feeding group of 5 whales that frequented the Morris Reef and I had many close encounters with. This photo clearly illustrates the structure and function of the baleen plates hanging from the roof of the whales’ mouth; they are smooth on the outside and frayed and bristly on the inside, thus creating a dense mat of coarse hairs to prevent any prey from escaping. The clearly defined palette in the roof of the mouth is also visible as is the common, distinctive pink “moustache” marking on the snout.
    Humpback whales-18.tif
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeanglia) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, the Morris Reef, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
I remember this group of bubblenet feeders very distinctly because I had many close encounters with them on the Morris Reef. There was a core group of the usual 5 or 6 individual whales and they were creating a lot of bubble nets. On this occasion they were so close to me that I had to remove my headphones because the sound of their feeding call was so loud and piercing. It was a sound that became so familiar to me, and was so ingrained in my mind that it constantly haunted my thoughts. I would imagine that it has the same effect on their prey. <br />
The baleen plates of one of the whales are clearly visible, and the means by which the water is filtered through them retaining any prey in its mouth.
    Humpback whales-20.tif
  • Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia) lunging during cooperative feeding using a bubble net, Tenakee Inlet, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
This was the photo that won the Mammal Behavior Category in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition in 2002. It wasn’t until after I attended the award ceremony at the Natural History Museum that I discovered that many of the judges were unhappy that it wasn’t awarded the title of the overall winner of the competition, and I subsequently discovered that that was the general public consensus as well. It was unfortunate that the controversy that surrounded the overall winner that year soured such a proud moment in my photographic career. I was contacted a few years later by the new head of the judging panel, Mark Carwardine, to ask for any guidelines for submitting a winning photo, because he felt that my photo was the best entry that year. C’est la vie !<br />
But the moment that can never be diminished or tainted was the moment that I captured the image. I was photographing a bubble net feeding group very near the community of Tenakee Springs, which can be seen to the left of the whale. They came up behind me and I can clearly remember zooming my lens back so that I could fit the entire throat of the whale into the photo, and fortunately I was just able to do that or else it might not have been a perfect award-winning photo.
    Humpback whales.tif
  • Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, the Morris Reef, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
Here is one member of the “Fantastic Five”, as I dubbed them, feeding on the Morris Reef. It clearly illustrates the moment when the whale shuts its jaws very quickly and firmly, and any water contained is forcefully ejected out through the baleen plates, and any prey is trapped inside its mouth. Also clearly visible are the distinctive bumps or “tubercles” on the rostrum of a humpback whale that are found on no other species of whale. Each tubercle has a small hair or “vibrissae”, that probably act like whiskers as sensory organs for detecting their prey.
    Humpback whales-13-2.tif
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeanglia) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, Tenakee Inlet, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
This feeding group clearly illustrates a typical formation with one lead whale ascending vertically out of the water and the rest arranged laterally around it. Sometimes there was more than one lead whale, but quite often it was just one.
    Humpback whales-14.tif
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeanglia) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, Tenakee Inlet, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
This photo illustrates the power of the whales when they surge to the surface. Their gaping jaws, scooping up hundreds of litres of sea water and fish, must exert a tremendous amount of drag. Some of the herring they were pursuing can be see flying through the air to escape their open mouths.
    Humpback whales-21.tif
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeanglia) cooperative feeding using a bubble net, near Kupreanof Island, Stephen’s Passage, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
This photo was taken near the Tlingit town of Kake on Kupreanof Island and illustrates the problems of the practice of clear-cut logging that persisted during the 1980s and 90s when I was based in Southeast Alaska. The extent of clear-cutting was much worse around native communities because the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) awarded approximately 148,500,000 acres (601,000 km2) of Federal land in Alaska to private native corporations which were created under ANCSA. Transference of public National Forest land to a privately owned corporation removes it from protection by Federal law and allows the owners to use the land in whatever way they see fit without regard to the effects of the use on surrounding lands and ecosystems. This fact has caused much controversy involving the business interests of Native Regional Corporations and the personal interests of local Natives and non-Native residents of Southeastern Alaska, such as subsistence hunting and tourism.
    Humpback whales-6-2.tif
  • Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia) lunging during cooperative feeding using a bubble net, Tenakee Inlet, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
Sometimes the cooperative feeding group would surface unexpectedly. If the sea was calm and there were plenty of seabirds around to help me to track the whales then it was easier, but if it was more difficult to see the bubbles on the surface or there were distracting sounds of boat engines in the vicinity then anything could happen, and on this occasion the whales exploded out of the water right behind me and I barely had enough time to swivel around to take a photo.
    Humpback whales-5.tif
  • Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia) lunging during cooperative feeding using a bubble net, the Morris Reef, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
The tightly packed baleen plates are clearly visible. They are smooth on the outside, and coarse and bristly on the inside.
    Humpback whales-19.tif
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeanglia) cooperative feeding using a bubble net), Morris Reef, Point Hayes, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
This was my first successful entry in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. I was Highly Commended for this photo of a lunge-feeding whale in the Endangered Species category in about 1994.
    Humpback whales-6.tif
  • This was a frequently enjoyed beautiful view from my camp on a small promontory overlooking Tenakee Inlet. It was good look-out point to watch for the arrival of any whales in September when I usually ended my summer kayaking trips here in time to catch the arrival of the bubble net feeding pods of humpback whales. At high tide the little islet with trees is cut-off for a while. There is an old Indian cemetery with several wooden grave markers on there making it an even more atmospheric look-out point. When the whales are bubble net feeding in September they often feed close to the shore along here.
    Southeast-Alaska-coast10.jpg
  • This was a typical bubble net feeding group with a permanent core of six individuals, but the size of the group would sometimes expand to about ten with the arrival of “guests”.
    Alaska-humpback-whale-feeding18.jpg
  • It was always good to have Fred Sharpe and his fellow whale researchers around in their Alaska Whale Foundation boat, “the Evolution”. We both had a lot of mutual respect for each other, and very importantly to me he shared the same respect for the whales, and always operated in a very non-intrusive manner. I was so used to being out there camping alone, but it was always nice to enjoy their company, and catch up on some jovial socializing and fine dining onboard his boat.<br />
Dr. Fred Sharpe started studying the behaviour of humpback whales in Southeast Alaska from a small skiff around about the same time that I started photographing them from a kayak. While I became quite obsessed with photographing the incredible cooperative bubble net feeding strategy of the whales, Fred conducted ground-breaking research into that behaviour and established such things as the task specialisation of individual members within a feeding group, whereby the same whale blows the bubbles and the same one makes the piercing feeding call. he is now stationed at the Five Finger Lighthouse, armed with a wireless hydrophone that AWF hopes will allow them to record and broadcast live, the diverse vocalizations made by humpback whales in Southeast Alaska.
    Alaska-humpback-whale-sounding22.jpg
  • This was my main camp for many years when I was photographing the bubble net feeding humpback whales. It was a perfect lookout point enabling me to look up and down Chatham Strait, which is the longest navigable channel in the USA. It’s also the point where the Peril Straits enters Chatham Strait from the Pacific Ocean to the west. It was a perfect camp site in many ways apart from being near one of the whales’ favourite feeding sites, the Morris Reef. It had two protected beaches for ease of launching and landing, facing either north or south, depending on which way the wind was blowing from. It was close to streams for fresh water and there was always plenty of firewood washed up on the shore. Perhaps my favourite reason was that in the forest nearby was the biggest patch of huckleberry bushes that I knew of, and huckleberries were my favourite berries to have on my stack of pancakes every morning, to fuel me up for another long hard day paddling with the whales.<br />
It was also a beautiful spot to eat my dinner in the evening. I cooked very elaborate dinners because that was evening’s entertainment every night. Every night I would slide back into my reclining camp seat and watch the dying embers of the fire flicker beneath the stars, and the moon cross Chatham Strait from Admiralty Island to Baranof Island. The stillness of the night was periodically punctuated by a gentle volley of whale breath, which perfectly complemented the sounds of contentment rumbling inside my full belly.
    Alaska-camping-kayaking14.jpg
  • This was one of my favourite campsites. It is directly opposite the native town of Angoon, where I often used to catch the ferry to from Petersburg to start my kayaking trips in the summer. I then usually had a relatively easy crossing to get here. To the right and south of the photo is Peril Strait, which is a narrow passage that leads to Sitka and the Pacific Ocean. Offshore is the submerged Morris Reef, which was one of the regular feeding places for bubble net feeding humpback whales, which were usually the ones that I dubbed "the Famous Five". The converging currents there create strong upwellings and choppy water that made the conditions difficult at times. It was a great campsite because it has a beaches facing north and south with a small causeway leading to a small islet that was cut-off at high tide. It made it easier for me to land  depending on which way the wind was blowing. The islet looks odd in this photo because half of the trees burnt down one summer. I was paddling across Chatham Strait and could see smoke belching from the islet that was such a special lookout point for me. As soon as I landed I found a big empty plastic oil drum on the beach and used it to go back and forth with water to make a fire break to save half the islet. But it was still upsetting for me when I was sitting next to my campfire in the evening watching one tree after another crashing down on the other side, sending up fireworks of glowing embers in the night sky. It was a really dry summer that year and small islands without any groundwater are particularly vulnerable to slow burning fires smouldering in the tinder-dry forest litter. In the foreground is a rudimentary totem and circle of log seats that some Tlingit native people from Angoon must have carved. I had been coming to this campsite for a few years, and was pleasantly surprised to find these here one summer, and they added more unique character to this campsite, as well as the islet with half its trees gone.
    Alaska-camping-kayaking11.jpg
  • Duncan Murrell eating his breakfast of huckleberry pancakes at Point Hayes, Chichagoff Island, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
<br />
This was my main camp for many years when I was photographing the bubble net feeding humpback whales. It was a perfect lookout point enabling me to look up and down Chatham Strait, which is the longest navigable channel in the USA. It’s also the point where the Peril Straits enters Chatham Strait from the Pacific Ocean to the west. It was a perfect camp site in many ways apart from being near one of the whales’ favourite feeding sites, the Morris Reef. It had two protected beaches for ease of launching and landing, facing either north or south, depending on which way the wind was blowing from. It was close to streams for fresh water and there was always plenty of firewood washed up on the shore. Perhaps my favourite reason was that in the forest nearby was the biggest patch of huckleberry bushes that I knew of, and huckleberries were my favourite berries to have on my stack of pancakes every morning, to fuel me up for another long hard day paddling with the whales.<br />
It was also a beautiful spot to eat my dinner in the evening. I cooked very elaborate dinners because that was evening’s entertainment every night. Every night I would slide back into my reclining camp seat and watch the dying embers of the fire flicker beneath the stars, and the moon cross Chatham Strait from Admiralty Island to Baranof Island. The stillness of the night was periodically punctuated by a gentle volley of whale breath, which perfectly complemented the sounds of contentment rumbling inside my full belly.
    Whaleman-12.tif
  • Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) lobtailing, Frederick Sound, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
Humpback whales are the most acrobatic and playful whales on the surface, making them the perfect whale for whale watching, with additional bonus of their spectacular cooperative bubble net feeding behavior. They engage in a lot of breaching (jumping) and lobtailing, which is when they raise their flukes out of the water and slap the surface repeatedly as this individual is doing. It creates a thunderclap noise that can be heard miles away. Actually on this occasion it was a cow and a calf lobtailing together, and the calf is often the instigator for play: they kept this up for about half an hour. There are many possible reasons for this behavior including trying to dislodge barnacles and other parasites, communicating with other whales, herding prey and as a threat display to boats that approach too closely. It could also be just for recreation.
    Alaska-humpback-whale-lobtail2.jpg
  • Humpback whales are the most acrobatic and playful whales on the surface, making them the perfect whale for whale watching, with the additional bonus of their spectacular cooperative bubble net feeding behavior. They engage in a lot of breaching (jumping) and lobtailing, which is when they raise their flukes out of the water and slap the surface repeatedly as this individual is doing. It creates a thunderclap noise that can be heard miles away. Actually on this occasion it was a cow and a calf lobtailing together, and the calf is often the instigator for play: they kept this up for about half an hour. There are many possible reasons for this behavior including trying to dislodge barnacles and other parasites, communicating with other whales, herding prey and as a threat display to boats that approach too closely. It could also be just for recreation.
    Alaska-humpback-whale-lobtail1.jpg
  • This was another photo taken by Francois Gohier when he was also photographing the bubble net feeding whales around the Morris Reef at Point Hayes. After I won the Mammal Category of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition in 2002 I was commissioned to write an article for the BBC Wildlife Magazine and this photo was used on the cover of the magazine, which was indeed an honour for me as I have been reading the magazine since I was a young boy.
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  • Duncan Murrell kayaking with humpback whales in his Nautiraid folding kayak, Point Hayes, Chatham Strait, Southeast Alaska, USA. Photo courtesy of Francois Gohier.<br />
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This was another photo taken by Francois Gohier when he was also photographing the bubble net feeding whales around the Morris Reef. After I won the Mammal Category of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition in 2002 I was commissioned to write an article for the BBC Wildlife Magazine and this photo was used on the cover of the magazine, which was indeed an honour for me as I have been reading the magazine since I was a young boy.
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  • Duncan Murrell photographing humpback whales in his Nautiraid double folding kayak at Point Hayes, Chichagof Island, Southeast Alaska, USA. Photo courtesy of Francois Gohier.<br />
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After many years of good service from my ageing Klepper Aerius 1 folding kayak, I invested in a new French Nautiraid double folding kayak, which gave me more carrying capacity and a larger, more comfortable cockpit to work in, but it also meant more effort to paddle it. It was much easier to pack than my old kayak and it was also incredibly stable even in rough sea conditions. It is designed to be used as a small double kayak that can also be paddled solo.<br />
This photo was taken by fellow whale photographer Francois Gohier from France. I had been familiar with his work for a long time as one of the most published whale photographers. He was shooting from a boat at one of my regular locations and camp sites, where the whales often perform bubble net feeding. He was kind enough to send me some of the photos that he took of me and commented, “You really know how to do things the hard way!” I couldn’t disagree with that comment because that’s my style, and even to this day I still do things the hard way because it’s the only way that I know how to be.
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  • Humpback whales are the most acrobatic and playful whales on the surface, making them the perfect whale for whale watching, with the additional bonus of their spectacular cooperative bubble net feeding behavior. They engage in a lot of breaching (jumping) and lobtailing, which is when they raise their flukes out of the water and slap the surface repeatedly as this individual is doing. It creates a thunderclap noise that can be heard miles away. Actually on this occasion it was a cow and a calf lobtailing together, and the calf is often the instigator for play: they kept this up for about half an hour. There are many possible reasons for this behavior including trying to dislodge barnacles and other parasites, communicating with other whales, herding prey and as a threat display to boats that approach too closely. It could also be just for recreation.
    Alaska-humpback-whale-lobtail3.jpg
  • I can never forget the amazing lighting on this morning when I was heading out of Tenakee Inlet with some guests aboard my boat "Selena" to take them to see humpback whales bubble net feeding at Point Hayes to the south down Chatham Strait. It was my birthday and I had a very unique and unexpected birthday present. We were motoring down Chatham Strait when I spotted an unusual shape bobbing on the surface: almost like the shape of ice cream sitting in a cone. When I looked through my binoculars I could hardly believe my eyes because I instantly recognised it as being a big bull northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) on the surface with its unmistakeable big proboscis drooping from its head. I had no idea that they ventured that far north, and after consulting with some local fisherman I was informed that it was indeed a very rare occurrence.
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  • After many years of good service from my ageing Klepper Aerius 1 folding kayak, I invested in a new French Nautiraid Raid double folding kayak, which is a small double that is very adaptable to paddle as a solo kayak. It gave me more carrying capacity and a larger, more comfortable cockpit to work from and move around in, but such a large beamy kayak required more effort to paddle it. It was much easier to pack than my old kayak and it was also incredibly stable, even in rough sea conditions. I very rarely used the cockpit cover and sprayskirt, which sometimes got me into trouble in heavy seas. After a few years of heavy usage the deck leaked quite badly, which was a serious  problem in heavy seas, and contributed to one of my worst near-death experiences when I got caught in bad weather crossing Chatham Strait, and my kayak filled up with icy cold water. I had to keep stopping to pump out the water but part of the pump came out so I had to use my cup to bale out the water after that. I only just made it and was shaking from being so chilled and the trauma for a long time even though it was a warm sunny day.<br />
This photo was taken by fellow whale photographer Francois Gohier from France. I had been familiar with his work for a long time as one of the most published whale photographers. He was shooting from a boat at one of my regular locations and camp sites, where the whales often perform bubble net feeding. He was kind enough to send me some of the photos that he took of me and commented, “You really know how to do things the hard way!” I couldn’t disagree with that comment because that’s my style, and even to this day I still do things the hard way because it’s the only way that I know how to be.
    Alaska-camping-kayaking19.jpg
  • Humpback whales are the most acrobatic and extrovert whales on the surface, making them the ideal whale for whale watching, with the added bonus of their spectacular cooperative bubble net feeding behavior. They engage in a lot of breaching ( jumping) and lobtailing, which is when they raise their flukes out of the water and slap the surface repeatedly as this individual is doing. It creates a thunderclap noise that can be heard miles away. There are many possible reasons for this behavior including trying to dislodge barnacles and other parasites, communicating with other whales, herding prey and as a threat display to boats that approach too closely. It could also be just for recreation.<br />
Photographs of the underside markings and colouration of the flukes can be used like a fingerprint to identify individual whales; they can be predominantly black or white with any variation in between, and cuts, scars and barnacle formations can also be used for identification. There are more predominantly white flukes in the southern hemisphere populations than in the north.
    Alaska-humpback-whale-lobtail5.jpg
  • Tenakee Inlet penetrates deep into Chichagof Island, and at the far end there is an old portage with a rail-track and cart to get across to Port Frederick, which leads to the native town of Hoonah. Nearly every September my summer kayaking trips ended up in Tenakee Inlet, when humpback whales usually arrive to feed on herring cooperatively using bubble nets. They often followed the herring up and down the inlet with me in tow in my kayak. This photo was taken over half-way up the inlet.
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  • These two humpback whales were members of a cooperative feeding group using bubble nets to herd and catch shoals of herring. There are submerged reefs in this area that they were working for a while, and it is most likely that they were breaching to create panic and shock waves to herd the herring against the reef and shoreline. I witnessed this behaviour several times with cooperative feeding pods when some of them either breached or lobtailed in unison in strategic locations to herd the shoal of herring into a bay, against a shoreline or submerged reef. I once witnessed five whales breaching simultaneously. It's incredible how they manage to coordinate their breaching over distance: another example of their highly developed social behaviour and communication.
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