Today was another awesome almost autumn day. Captain Mike and I headed North towards Spieden Island. We snuck around the north side of the island and soon saw a Humpback Whale fluke up! It was a fairly young one feeding in between Spieden and Johns Islands ever so lazily. We watched it fluke up a few times. As we get into fall more and more Humpbacks are heading south to their breeding grounds so we may see more in the upcoming weeks based on how hungry they are, the food availability and how fast they want to go to their breeding grounds. After watching him for a while we headed west towards Henry Island and eventually spotted Orcas! They were part of the Southern Resident Orcas (the fish eating ones) headed north. They were mostly travelling and foraging but a few of the young ones breached and tail-slapped. We got to see several family groups of J pod including Granny (J-2) who is 105 years old! We saw a few members more closely than others including Blackberry (J-27) and his sister Tsuchi (J-31). It was spectacular to see so much of J pod especially since they seemed to be headed out last night and since their food source, Chinook Salmon, is very low this year. After we left the orcas we got to see a ton of Harbor Porpoise, Harbor Seals, and one Steller’s Sea Lion on the way back home as well as the strange exotic animals like Fallow Deer and Mouflon Sheep on Spieden Island on the way back as well. As fall quickly approaches the marine ecosystem is going to change usually brining tons of birds and sometimes oddball marine mammals too! Whale folks until next time have a San Juanderful day.
Naturalist Erick
M/V Sea Lion