We started our day a bit earlier than usual in order to take a better advantage of the tides and its currents. We boarded our expedition landing craft and went exploring the marvelous Inian Islands; located between the Fairweather Range on the mainland and the northern coast of Chichagof Island, the Inian’s are a small archipelago in the middle of one of the main entrances to the Inside Passage, where enormous volumes of water flow through four times every day with the tides. As a result, abundant fishes swim by and Steller sea lions congregate to feed on them. We watched many of them violently shaking their catch in order to break it into smaller, more manageable pieces to swallow, while black-legged kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls and the occasional bald eagle disputed the leftovers. Sea otters, pigeon guillemots and even a solitary transient male killer whale were among the creatures that we observed.

As National Geographic Sea Lion navigated around the Inian’s, we encountered a young humpback whale very actively engaged in what seemed to be some kind of play with a group of Steller sea lions; they splashed around and came very close to us a couple of times, regaling us with a great view of the baby whale swimming just under the surface.

We anchored at Port Althorp for the evening, where we enjoyed hiking and kayaking. A couple of brown bear sightings, abundant bear sign, some more sea otter, a river otter and a couple of breaching humpback whales made for a great end to another wonderful day in Southeast Alaska.