[7/17/17- M/V Sea Lion- 1:30 PM]
Another day out on the water here in the beautiful Salish Sea! We left our dock in Friday Harbor and headed to the North West side of Orcas Island. Once we got to that area we found a couple different families of transient killer whales, but we focused our attention on the T77’s.
The T77’s have five individuals in their family, T77, who is the 36-year-old matriarch of the group, and all of her offspring. Her youngest kiddo, T77E, is about a year old and is as cute as can be. We watched the whales make two different kills, most likely some harbor seals, and then begin to travel North. Sometimes it only takes the whales about 5 minutes to make a kill, other times it can up to about 45 minutes. This time they were pretty focused and didn’t seem to dilly dally with their food.
After watching the whales, we decided to head to Flattop Island to see if we could find some other wildlife. We saw a number of harbor seals hanging out on the shoreline as well as some pups. In addition, we saw three bald eagles, two of which were a mated pair who were perched right next to each other. Bald Eagles mate for life, so to see the pair nestled together is a heart-warming sight. The weather was beautiful and thankfully the whales were not far away so we got to spend a good amount of time with them before looking for other wildlife.
Naturalist, Rachel
