[Naturalist Erick D., M/V Sea Lion, 7/29/17, 1:30PM]
Yesterday Captain Gabe, Kelsey, and I headed out with a boat full of great folks to go look for some marine wildlife outside of Friday Harbor. We started by going north through San Juan Channel and soon into Presidents Channel between Orcas and Waldron Islands. We then saw a blow in the distance!
It was a pretty big blow, and as we approached we saw that it was a Humpback Whale! It was swimming towards us so we turned around a paralleled it as it swam south. It is still amazing to see these behemoths swimming through the slender passageways between the islands. Humpbacks were absent from the Salish Sea for over 60 years as a result of the whaling industry in both the U.S. and Canada. Now not too long after the first Humpbacks started appearing again here and there are some staying throughout the whole summer!
This one was doing deeper dives as it headed south, so sometimes it would fluke up and show its massive tail. The underside of their tails is how researchers and we naturalists identify individual whales. Each one is a unique pattern of white and dark grey, and scratches and scars that they collect throughout their life also provide identifying marks as well. This humpback whale was identified as BCY0523 aka Graze.
Check out its ID photos and this local Humpback Whale group here:
We watched this whale keep swimming through the channel and towards Jones Island, but we eventually left to checkout some other marine wildlife. We stopped next at Flattop Island. This is one of the islands owned by the Bureau of Land Management and protected as wildlife refuges. Here we saw a lot of Pacific Harbor Seals with a few pups hauled out on the rocks. They are sooo cute! As these guys are definitely seals. Many folks use the terms seal and sea lion interchangeably and that’s understandable because there’s actually many seals and sea lions whose common names are misleading, but the easiest way for me to tell the difference is when they are land. If they are all lying horizontal and when they move no of them are walking, those are seals. Seals can only scooch on land since their flippers are short and their rear flippers cannot be rotated. Sea Lions, on the other flipper, are very mobile on land with long rotating flippers that work like floppy feet.
On this island we also saw a few Bald Eagles as well. They were perched on a few trees and a few of them even took off and flew around as well. After enjoying that much wildlife it was soon time to make our way back to Friday Harbor to get ready for another trip!
Naturalist Erick