The pic below of a humpback is Whale Park along the waterfront in Juneau. In the background on the left side is 3-4 cruise ships in port that day. Whales are difficult to catch jumping out of the water so here's what they look like.
A crappy cell phone pic of a humback we saw.
The Orca or Killer whales are the largest of the oceanic dolphin family. They have teeth and will eat just about anything including humpback whales. Known as apex predators. They are typically 20-32 feet long and up to 10 tons.
I do have some whales in the water pics but I'll have to go through them.
We did see some orcas jump out of the water. It was impressive but it was near impossible to capture a pic of that. On one day several pods of Orcas (at least 20) began playing near the ship. They bumped and rolled and went under the ship. At other times just about everywhere you looked you could see them spouting. They were all over the place.
Orca near the boat
One interesting thing about whales is they don't go up channels, bays where there are glaciers. That's because the noise of the ice breaking off screws up their echo location system as does the presence of icebergs. Consequently, those areas are a haven for seals and sea otters whose main predator are killer whales. You see a lot of seal/sea lions and otters in those fjords.
