A humpback whale has been frequenting Ketchikan, Alaska, almost daily for the past month, helping to lift spirits as the city reels from a lack of tourism.
The whale, nicknamed Phoenix, is feeding on herring and possibly salmon fry with dramatic upward lunges, sometimes just yards from onlookers on docks and walkways.
As days shorten and a bleak winter approaches, more residents are discovering the joy of searching for Phoenix throughout the channel fronting the town.
“I love everyone’s photos of him. He is a star!” reads one of hundreds of comments on the Whale Spotters Ketchikan Facebook group page, whose membership has spiked recently to more than 2,600.
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Some are posting alerts, so others will know where to look. “Phoenix is heading south from Safeway, now. 10:30 a.m.,” reads a Sunday morning post.
A comment last Friday: “I love how many people are gathering to see this whale! If I didn’t see all of the cars parked along Berth 4 I would have missed this today. Thanks for making it obvious when he is near, fellow whale lovers.”
This comes at a time when many of Alaska’s humpback whales have migrated to nursing and mating grounds in Hawaiian waters. But Phoenix, for now, is content to fatten up in the chilly, rich waters off southeast Alaska.
“I know for a fact that there are still quite a few humpback whales up here not far from Ketchikan, but this is the only one buzzing so close to town,” Dale Frink, a photographer and naturalist, told For The Win Outdoors. “A lot of people, especially kids, have been able to see a whale up close for the first time without having to get on a boat.”
Ketchikan, whose economy relies heavily on cruise ship tourism, lost that revenue this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But residents are trying to look past this year and their mood seems to brighten whenever Phoenix opens wide for a giant gulp of tiny fish.
“Ketchikan rises from the ashes of 2020 with Phoenix the Humpback Whale leading the way,” Frink wrote last week on an Instagram post showing Phoenix feeding a stone’s throw from onlookers.
Frink, who moved to Ketchikan recently after accepting a job at Allen Marine Tours, allowed the use of his photos in the body of this story. The top image, which shows some of Phoenix’s admirers, was approved for use by local photographer James Lewis.
Phoenix was named by photographer Bob Lippert, who was the first to document the whale off Wrangell, Alaska, in 2017. Phoenix, whose sex is unknown, has since been documented several times in the channel between Wrangell and Ketchikan, according to the Happywhale citizen-scientist identification catalog.
How long the whale will remain off Ketchikan is anyone’s guess.
–Images courtesy of James Lewis (top) and Dale Frink
