Laura / M/V Sea Lion / 3/30/2022 / 12:30PM
“We are going to follow the naval nuclear submarine home today”, was a sentence I may never say again on a whale watch excursion, but it made everyone on the boat smile. And seeing an escorted submarine was just icing on the cake for today’s trip. M/V Sea Lion held 22 passengers onboard and left Friday Harbor with gusto at 12:30PM. Captain Brian had not heard of a firm whale report yet, but we had his years of experience of finding whales on our side and the crowd’s exuberant energy was contagious!
Seas were choppy at 2-3 feet, and we hit some larger rollers as we moved southbound through Cattle Pass. We stopped along Whale Rocks to check out about 50 active Steller sea lions and 6 bald eagles! There must have been a carcass on the rock structure, as we could see 4 juvenile bald eagles circling around each other and multiple adults were spotted in the area. Some days along the rocks seem lazy, but today the area was hopping with sea lions jumping in and out of the water and congregating in groups to swim along the kelp forests. It was an electric sight to see birds circling overhead, sea lions, eagles, and swarming seas around these rocks that demonstrated the amount of diverse life in this marine zone.
M/V Sea Lion traveled outside our typical radius and with all passengers a go, it ended up being a 5.5-hour trip! Orcas were reported in Puget Sound, northbound in Admiralty Inlet traveling at about 8 knots. Everyone braved the sloshy seas and scanned along the horizon with hopes of getting to see killer whales today. We finally got a call that a whale watch vessel spotted 10-12 blows and we were about 10 miles from making contact.
Once we arrived on scene, everyone was thrilled to be surrounded by orcas! Blows were seen in all directions as these whales were spread out and seemed to be socializing. We had a close pass by the T99’s, and passengers got a great look at T99 and T99C as they came right along our port side! Luckily, since these whales were all over, we basically kept our vessel stationary for most of the encounter and just enjoyed the views and epic whale moments. In all, we had the T137s, T99s, T125, and T127. Some of their names were "Jack, Loon, Tempest, Wright, Bella, Kirk, Molly, and Barakat." We got great looks at the new T99 calf from August 2021, T99E. Adding a crazy twist to the adventure, passengers were able to see a navy submarine being escorted by multiple vessels heading northbound in Admiralty Inlet. It was such an incredible thing to witness this scene around us and how urban these orcas truly are. We continued to enjoy these whales surface around us, show some hunting behavior, and general social behavior. T127 has a unique dorsal fin that can be distinguished from quite a distance. He had some previous injury that left this dorsal fin quite mangled, and it doesn’t pose a problem for him as their top dorsal fin is all cartilage. Since we made the commitment to come this far, our Captain Brain let us enjoy the scene for over 30 minutes before we started the long journey home.
To cap off the trip, we were all surprised to find a lone male orca as we came back through Cattle Pass, hugging the Lopez Island shoreline! The male crossed the channel and immediately starting hunting near the shoreline below the homes at the lighthouse. We watched him for a few minutes and just as we pulled away, he did three full cartwheels! It was epic! Originally, we thought this was T77A, but he turned out to be T49C, almost an identical dorsal fin! These two whales have been called “the twins” and at times have been seen traveling together. T49C is also known as “Janet”, named after a humpback researcher Janet Nielsen in the area. I must say, this was one of the most memorable whale-watches I have witnessed in the Salish Sea, and I believe every passenger felt the same. Thank you all for coming today and having this incredible experience with us!