Today was the first day of Memorial Day Weekend and we celebrated it by nearly filling both of our vessels, the Sea Lion and the Kittiwake, for an afternoon whale watch. Throughout the day, the weather went from gray clouds and overcast to nice white fluffy clouds and sunshine. We boarded the boats and left Friday Harbor heading north towards the Canadian border. After an hour of solid travel, several sea birds, numerous islands and a swimming harbor seal, we edged up to East point off Saturna Island. And there they were: a pod of transient orcas!
As we approached the area, we heard through the vessel radio grapevine that the pod may have made a recent Stellar sea lion kill. When we got to the scene, the whales were zig-zagging and milling about; no obvious foraging activity was seen. While observing the pod, we noticed a very large adult male dorsal fin that had significant lean to the left and was very curved for a male. The other individuals in the pod appeared to be females and juveniles. Later, another vessel identified one of the orcas as T18.
After ten minutes or so, the pod started traveling faster towards the south, moving more erratically and then thrashing about. The hunt was on! And it looked like another Stellar sea lion was the target. We saw the pod of four orcas thrashing about, throwing their bloody red tasty morsel in the air. At one point, it looked like the sea lion had gotten away and it made some headway with about forty feet of distance from the whales. But then the transients caught up to their meal and continued thrashing and tossing it around. Eventually, the male and a second orca split off from the other two, leaving the latter to contend with the sea lion. Time was running out for our whale watch and we began making our way back to Friday Harbor.
All in all, quite an exciting day. Seeing transient orca whales feed is never a boring event, especially with the thrashing, breaching and tossing of a bleeding sea lion in the air!
Serena, Naturalist
San Juan Safaris