The man I worked for in Anchorage needed a tax write off, and something else to do in the summer, so he applied for, and got a fishing permit in Prince William Sound for crab and halibut. This was 1982.
At the end of the season I was invited for a 3-day sail from Whittier, where the boat was docked while working; to Seward where it would be kept for the winter months.
In the first hour of the trip we saw a family of sea otters, with one of the adults cracking a mollusk on its stomach, and feeding the baby.
Then a pod of porpoises played off the bow for a few minutes. My boss was just remarking that they usually hung around for a while longer than just a couple of minutes, when we found ourselves in the center of a pod of about 20 Orcas.
Which explained why the porpoises hightailed it out of there. My boss, who was a Type-A control freak, started getting REAL WORRIED. Mainly because the baby/juvenile of the pod decided to PLAY underneath the boat's prop by undulating up and down.
My boss figured that the boat' s hull (fiberglass) was going to be stoved in by a pack of pissed off KILLER WHALES when the baby got cut on the prop.
To make matters worse, the baby's mother and the alpha female were standing station off the stern so close to the port and starboard corners of the transom, that I (at 5'9" tall) could have reached out and grabbed either of their dorsal fins, had someone held me by the belt while I hooked both boots over the rail.
This went on for about 30 minutes, with the baby orca only pausing to sound for air. Then it was right back under the prop.
My boss was really sweating things because he was 1 Survival Suit short for the number of people on the boat. A HUGE Coast Guard NO-NO!!!!
By all rights, one of us should not have been on board.
After the killer whales left it was just the anti-climatic, typical Alaskan stuff. More sea otters, golden eagles in abundance, moose on the shoreline, wolves howling at night when we anchored.
No big deal. NOT!!
On of the best trips in my life, from a real generous boss.
Edit:
Of course, the orcas with their superb echo location knew EXACTLY WHERE THEY, THE 2 ADULT FEMALES, AND THE BABY WERE AT ALL TIMES. The momma was never going to let her baby get hurt by the boat's propeller.
We kept trying to tell my boss that, but he never quite bought into it. Needless to say that baby orca had a great time.
This was pre-Exxon Valdez. It really tore my guts out when I heard, and saw what had happened to Prince William Sound.