Kenai Fjords - Captain's Choice Tour

Today's activity was one that I had long waited for, a cruise in the Alaskan waters catering to wildlife photography. They call it the Captain's Choice tour, as the captain (on request of the passengers) decides the route on the day and there is a lot of flexibility in where you go and how long you stay.
They also have a maximum of 18 people on the boat, so you're not stuck with 100 other people on a big cruise ship. Our ship was called the Misty, and our captain was Sherry and the deckhand was Jacob.

After the initial safety briefing and asking us what we would most like to see on this cruise, we took off from Seward harbour.

After a short drive we saw a humpback whale, my very first whale watching experience! And it was great, I got some good shots of the tail just as we were about to move on.

One of the Puffins in flight. These guys can't really fly very well, they start a bit like albatrosses by running a lot on the water and flapping their wings like crazy. Or if they start off from a cliff, they actually fall a considerable distance before their wings kick in. They are very cute and they can also dive underwater for quite a long time. Here is one in flight.

We also came across a pod of orcas! According to our captain there was a new baby (2012 edition) amongst them. They can be identified by their dorsal fin and the pod has a leader who decides when to dive, where to go etc.

We also saw sea lions, drying and sleeping in the sun.

These guys were posing nicely for us.

The steam coming off them as they are still wet from the water. Despite the sun, the temperature on the water was about 10C.

As I mentioned before, these Puffins are not the most elegant of birds :)

Whilst we were going full speed ahead, a pod of Dall Porpoises joined us and swam alongside, darting from side to side in front of the boat. Video below thanks to Simone!

One of them splashed out of the water just in front of me, and all I captured was the splash.Looks pretty though!

Some sea otters we saw fishing and eating. They were quite far away though.

Aialik Glacier.We spent some time here, just listening to the sound of the ice rumbling and thundering as it breaks off into the ocean. It definitely shows you that it's moving, a flow of compacted snow down the mountain. This glacier grows by about 3-5 feet every day.

Video:

The water is only just above freezing, so there is still ice floating around.

A bigger cruiseship as a size comparison. That ship was about 1.5miles away from the glacier.

The next photos show a huge chunk of ice breaking off. We were about a mile away (due to safety), so it may look small but the chunk breaking off would be equivalent to a multistory building.

Another orca on the way back, and we also saw another humpback whale.