The next day, we went out onto the ocean to do fishing town things, like see sea lions, set crab pots, and whale watch.

Whale watching in the summer in Alaska is pretty much a sure thing. We watched the humpbacks “bubble net” fish for a long time. The whales swim in a circle, blowing bubbles, creating a column of bubbles that traps the krill. They then swim up through the column with their mouths open, catching as much food as possible, and they let the water dribble out of their baleens at the top. It looks like a lot of splashing and chaos from far away.

Later that night, we put on entirely waterproof outfits and took a skiff out to check our crab pots in Funter Bay, and it was there that we encountered another pod of humpbacks bubble net fishing, only this pod was doing it entirely too close to our 6-person glorified rowboat with a persistent leak. The whales were closer to us than the ocean was deep. We even heard them talking, coordinating the nets. Trust me when I say that it looks like a bunch of splashing and chaos from up close, too, except that you can really tell that the whales are the size of semi-trucks and that they are alive and have minds of their own and haven’t eaten in 9 months and this is the only time they get to eat all year.

It was awesome in the literal sense of the word. Not like how fried chicken is awesome (although fried chicken is awesome). But like in the way that makes you cry real tears and feel like you narrowly missed a car accident.

We didn’t catch any crabs that night (the ones below are tanners - too small to fish), but we did drink some recovery bourbon.

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