[Thursday, 6/7/18 - M/V Sea Lion - 12:00 - Naturalist Erick] T100’s
On Thursday we got a little break in what locals call our “June-uary” weather. After a sunny warm stint in May, June often comes here and reminds us that it is still spring. Captain Mike, myself, and one of our brand new Naturalists, Mariana, took a great group of folks out to look for more fun springtime wildlife! We headed up north in between the outer islands of the San Juan Archipelago. We made our first stop around White Rock to check out a hefty colony of Harbor Seals. These rock sausages are definitely our most common marine mammals in the Salish Sea and I kind of consider them sort of the mascot for the area. You can find them almost everywhere and they are super adorable. After we watched them watch us back for awhile we headed further north to find some other marine mammals. Right around the sandy, western point of Waldron Island we started to spot some blows in the distance. As we approached we could tell that it was a group of Orcas! Once we got even closer we could even tell that this was an average-sized family of Bigg’s (Transient) Orcas traveling together. Bigg’s Orcas are one of the many ecotypes of orcas that live throughout the world’s oceans. The Salish Sea surrounding the San Juan Islands is a special place because we often see two ecotypes in this area throughout the year. The Bigg’s Orcas are the one ecotype in this region that prey on marine mammals - mostly Harbor Seals. This family is the T100’s. They are a family of 6 Orcas and a family to orcas is a matriarch who is an older female and her offspring and sometimes her grandkids too! This family does have three generations in it. T100 herself, the matriarch, was born in the late 70’s and her oldest daughter that travels with here, T100B, now has her own calf. She also has a son, T100C, who is ‘sprouting’. This is sort of like male orca puberty where their fins get really big and their dorsal fin gets really straight and tall. They travelled around Sandy Point on Waldron and looked like they were searching for some things to hunt! This type of orca hunts stealthily and eventually tries to drown their prey - so gruesome. We watched them for awhile as they swam back and forth in front of the evergreen covered cliffs of Waldron Island. We soon had to leave this amazing family and head out to see some Bald Eagles and head back to Friday Harbor!! What another amazing day in Friday Harbor.
Naturalist Erick
