Elle | M/V Sea Lion | 8/19/2022 | 2:00PM
Today we traveled from Friday Harbor, WA to Victoria, BC and back again in search of wildlife. First we encountered Steller's sea lions at Whale Rocks, one of their favorite spots to stop and hang out as they migrate to Alaska for the summer. We were lucky this group decided to stay for a few extra months! We continued southwest until we saw blows in the distance. These turned out to be a young family of Bigg's killer whales. The mother of this family was born in 1995 and has had four calves, although one (her first calf) is sadly deceased. Her youngest calf was born in 2021 and was so little! Since all of Pebbles' (T75B) babies are still very young, it's hard to tell their sex from the surface. We usually rely on the height of the dorsal fin to tell us the sex of an orca. Males can have dorsal fins up to 6ft tall, while females' dorsal fins will remain around 3ft. Males don't "sprout" their taller fins until later in life, after whale puberty, so we will have to wait and see if any of these youngsters sprout a massive fin in the next few years. After watching this family dive in different directions, always following their mother, we departed to look for other wildlife. Just outside Friday Harbor, we slowed to look at some harbor seals and also got a surprise look at a minke whale! What a great way to wrap up our tour!