Maxx K. | M/V Kestrel | 07/18/2022 | 2:00pm
I had a blast on today's tour! Kestrel raced out of Friday Harbor towards the north, stopping first to admire a bald eagle that sat looming over the San Juan Channel. We ended up seeing at least eleven eagles during the duration of our tour today and I’m confident we must’ve missed at least a handful more during our journey. The Salish Sea has the second largest breeding population of bald eagles outside of southeast Alaska so keep your eyes to the trees and there’s a good chance you’ll see one.
We continued onward, stopping next at Flattop Island where we hung out with honestly, more Harbor seals than I’ve seen in a long time. Everywhere you looked there was a rock sausage- not a single foot of shoreline being unutilized. It’s pupping season so dozens of tiny week old seal pups nestled close to their mothers.
From there we continued on even further north, over the US/Canadian border and towards rumors of Bigg’s Killer Whales in the Canadian Gulf Islands.
We found T049A2 (“Jude”) and T065A3 (“Amira”) just between Mayne and Samuel Islands, and slowly followed them as they propelled forward, through Georgeson Pass. It has been my dream to see whales in this tiny channel. At its widest Georgeson is probably 100 yards with steep cliffs on either side. It’s absolutely stunning.
The two boys popped out of the Channel and proceeded to zig-zag amongst several rocky islands along Saturna’s eastern shoreline. They appeared ahead of us initially, then off our starboard. In the next moment they emerged directly off our stern. They must’ve been right underneath us! What’re they up to?
The honest truth is that we don’t really know. Perhaps they were foraging for seals. Perhaps they found deeper currents to play around it. Maybe they were rubbing their bodies against the bull kelp forests that sprouted out of the rocky seabed.
Honestly, the more I am able to watch these animals and observe them, the more questions I end up having. We witness their lives through a keyhole, the 5% of their lives they’re at the surface breathing. I love not knowing where the whales are going to emerge next. I love not truly knowing what they're up to or what they're saying to one another. I love that in the case of these two unrelated boys, we’ll never really know what their relationship is to one another. I will be forever curious, of course, but I love how much whales humble us. We can see them day in and out yet will we ever completely understand them? I’m not convinced and I love that.