Icy Strait Premier Whale Watching Adventure
Your Icy Strait Point whale-watching tour (with guaranteed whale sightings!) begins when a transport picks you up just outside icy strait point whale watching the gates of Icy Strait Point, where it will drive to Hoonah Harbor dock to meet the charter boat. Along the way, you may spot some of our local wildlife including Alaskan Brown Bears, bald eagles, blacktail deer, and more.
Once aboard and traveling along the shorelines, sightings of bears, deer, coastal ducks and geese, blue herons, puffins, swans, terns, cormorants, and more are common. In the water, you may get a chance to spot, orcas, sea otters, sea lions, porpoises, and seals in addition to the feeding humpbacks.
Humpback whales come to Hoonah in huge numbers to feed on the nutrient-rich waters of Glacier Bay and Icy Strait every summer beginning in May before migrating south again in September for the winter. Humpback whales are large baleen whales that can reach over 50 feet in length and weigh as much as 30-50 tons. Humpbacks are amazingly active and typical whale sightings will include diving, blows, and flukes (tails). Lucky whale watchers may get to see breaching and bubble-net feeding, a cooperative feeding method where a pod forms a circle and dives under the water; they then blow air to create a wall of bubbles that force krill and plankton to the surface where the whales can eat them. Observing humpbacks practice bubble-net feeding is a real treat and a truly thrilling experience.