Daily Report from the Journalism Committee:
A Whale of a Tale
Kate Belew
29 June 2007
Today you would have found most of the Alaska Great Lakes Project participants standing on the front of the boat yelling, “There she blows,” or “Fluke, fluke”, as they watched the magnificent creatures called whales off the coast of the town of Homer, Alaska. On the Rainbow Connection tour boat very early in the morning the group boarded the boat. They cruised along for a bit looking at the beautiful coastline and seeing little critters such as sea otters or puffins. The real story comes in, however, after the group left the bay. That was where the whales were first sighted.
Whales are huge creatures. They also have a huge shock factor, enough, to send the whole group into a silent state of reverence and awe of the creatures. Hannah Rockwell said about her first sight of the whales, “I thought it was better then standing on top of Exit Glacier.” The group then watched the whales dive in and out of the waves at a respectful distance until the whales got a bit curious and came to explore the boat and its crew. One whale came so close that it actually swam under the boat. Some lucky participants got to see at least the tail of the whale as it came out on the other side. “I thought that it was amazing, and I was lucky to get to see them up close,” said Lucy Morrison about her close encounter with the whale.
The trip was truly spectacular with truly spectacular sights. There were lapses of nothing being sighted at all but everyone entertained each other with cards or books and some people took naps out in the sun until the shouts of another whale woke them up. At one point on the boat trip small porpoises came up to the boat and swam along with us at racing speeds, at the same time another whale showed up in front of us. Sometime after that we found some different whales to watch. After watching them for a while we decided to head onto other whales, but just as we were turning away one of the whales breached. For those who don’t know a breaching whale is one that actually leaves the ocean and jumps. The lucky ones got to see the whole thing. Some people unfortunately missed it. Gabi Fratta said, “I only saw the splash so it was kind of a bummer.” Unfortunately no one caught it on film or on camera. But the sight of the breaching whale was amazing.
Whales are incredibly large. The boat captain said we were very lucky to have such beautiful weather and luck. The whale-watching trip was great fun for everyone from the participants to some adult drivers. One of the van drivers, Wayne Campau, said this about the trip, “The whale watching trip was an experience of a lifetime, traveling about the world and seeing many wonders of the world, the whale watching trip has topped them all.” The boat ride lasted about 11 hours and even though that is an extremely long ride in the end it was worth it. As we were heading back into the bay the boat’s crew was kind enough to help us by stopping to let us fish for some halibut for dinner. Everyone had a ton of fun and got a bunch of good pictures and memories to take back from the trip.
Whale day
Kaitlin Frazier
29 June 2007
This morning everyone woke up bright and early to the sound of a rooster at the beautiful seaside farms where AGLP is staying whilst in Homer. We all scrambled around to hurry to breakfast before all the “good” cereal was consumed. After breakfast all the AGLP participants got ready for our all day boat tour by layering up on clothes to fend off the bone-chilling cold of the winds coming off the Kachemak Bay.
We hopped into the vans and made our way down the spit. At Salty Dawg Saloon the vans pulled into parking places and everyone filed out with their backpacks. We only had to wait for five minutes or so until we began walking out on the docks. We came to a boat called Rainbow Connections with a rainbow and an orca on the back of the boat. We loaded up and sat quietly till everyone was aboard.
Once everyone was aboard we were introduced to Captain Monica and her crew. After listening to what the crew had to say everyone was eager to get into the bay to see some amazing whales, so without farther ado, we set sail for our adventure in Kachemak Bay,
We had to travel out into the bay quite a ways until we would see the whales, so, until then everyone read books, played cards, ate the snack bar food, or slept. Then, after a while the first mate came on over the PA system and announced that we found our first whale.
We all rushed outside of the cabin with our cameras and binoculars to see our first whale of the day. When you whale watch there are three parts to it. First you have to find, or hunt the whales until you see them. Then, once you see them they usually dive down deep into the water and sometimes don’t appear for quite sometime. That’s called whale waiting while your waiting for them to reappear. Then there’s the most fun, whale watching. That’s when you watch them play in the water, and swim around.
After we saw the first whale we started seeing a lot more of them. Onetime after lunch there were eight whales around our boat. But, too soon it started getting late and we had to return to land. We started making our way back, but we had to catch tomorrow’s dinner of halibut before we could go back. Some of us kids got to fish and got lucky!
After leaving the pier, we drove back to Seaside Farms. The Adults all went out to dinner and the Junior Leaders had to make us dinner. They made us a delicious meal of stir-fry. We were all surprised when we tasted it and found out they could actually cook! Good Job Junior Leaders!
After dinner we had some time before bedtime so we wrote in our journals, went down to the beach, or the swing, or we played games and enjoyed the view. Once again, bedtime came to quickly, but not before we had hug time! After hug time we couldn’t neglect our sleeping bags for any longer, and we slipped into them.
Its so surprising how fast time flies when you’re in Alaska. You don’t notice it, and it seems like just yesterday you were gazing at the mountains for the first time, instead of looking at them for three weeks. Hopefully we will cherish every second of the 6 days we have left here in Alaska. |