Elle | M/V Sea Lion | 8/18/2022 | 2:00PM
Today’s trip on Sea Lion took us out of Roche Harbor and up into the Canadian Gulf Islands. We stopped at a rocky reef near Spieden Island to look at some harbor seals and their pups, which are just a month or two old. As we continued up to Canada, we encountered a group of Bigg’s killer whales south of Gooch Island in the Haro Strait. We arrived just as they were finishing their hunt of a harbor porpoise, so we got to see some playful behavior before they began weaving north between more of the smaller Gulf Islands. This family is known as the T002s. The mother, Tasu, is the daughter of Pointednose Cow, an orca captured in Pedder Bay in 1970 and sold to an aquarium in Texas before being released back into the wild in the 1980s. Tasu gave birth to four calves, one of which died because of scoliosis. Today she has four calves with her, the youngest was born in 2020! As we returned from Canada, we passed Turn Point Lighthouse, the farthest northwest point in the lower 48 United States, and caught a few glimpses of harbor porpoises!