Naturalist Alexandria | M/V Sea Lion | June 11, 2019 | 5:30 PM
What an awesome evening tour we had today! We were with orcas earlier today for our noon tour, but had heard on the radio once we got back that the orcas we were had headed out of the area by the time we were ready for our sunset trip. This is always possible, one time of day for a trip isn’t better than the other, but our whales here can swim over 100 miles in one day, so it is always possible that we have them for one trip, and not for the other.
Captain Pete and myself were disappointed to hear this report, but as luck would have it right before we boarded up M/V Sea Lion with our sunset crew we heard a report of more orcas that had come into the area!
As you can imagine, we were so excited about this news! As we boarded everyone onto the boat Captain Pete updated everyone and told them about our new gameplan- to go find us some orcas- specifically the T49As!
We headed northwest- toward a channel that separate Orcas Island from Shaw Island, and right outside of the Orcas Island ferry terminal we were able to picked up these orcas! We were one of the only boats on scene with these orcas the whole evening! We genuinely got to spend almost 3 hours with these animals, watching them slowly swim through this channel.
We got to see them hunt on multiple occasions too! In fact at one point they deep what appeared to be a deeper dive, and as they surfaced there was quite the commotion on the surface! Lots of splashing followed, and we were all pretty confident they were enjoying part of their Harbor Seal entrée.
After spending a very generous and enjoyable amount of time watching these incredible animals, we decided to spend the last 30-45 minutes of our trip going to find some other wildlife for everyone to enjoy. We headed over to Spieden Island were we were treated to views of Fallow Deer, and Moufflan Sheep as well as many harbor seals laying on the shoreline.
As we continued to scan the cliffside we realized we had not one, but two Bald Eagles sitting on the bluff just above us. It was the perfect stop to see so much wildlife within feet of each other!
Tonight truly was a special trip, it was so perfect to be able to spend such a beautiful, calm evening with these amazing creatures.
Until Next Time,
Naturalist Alexandria