On Sunday, Captain Mike, myself, and Hannah set out on yet another sunny adventurous day in the Salish Sea. It was a wee bit windy down south, so we headed north to search within and on the northern edge of our little archipelago here. We skimmed past Orcas Island and Waldron Island two of our taller islands and definitely the ones with enormous coniferous trees hanging on desperately onto the rocky cliffs that rise from the dark blue waters. We approached the Patos Island lighthouse which is beautiful in its own rite and started to see a blow go up into the air. Just based on its size already we knew that it was one of our larger baleen whales. Since these whales are larger and have two openings that they breathe out of instead of the one that toothed whales have, the baleen whales’ blows have a distinctive bushy V shape to them. As we got closer, we identified it as a Humpback Whale (Megaptera novangliae) feeding in the nutrient waters coming down from the Georgia Strait. This was a younger one and also an individual that I had never seen before so we’ll be looking in the books later to see if this one has been identified yet! Any time we see a Humpback in our waters it’s super special because up until around 6 years ago we wouldn’t have seen any in our waterways. Whaling took a heavy toll on their population even in the North Pacific Ocean, but it seems since whaling ended for almost every nation in the later 80’s their population has started to make a come back in our area and they are expanding their feeding range and migration routes closer to shore once again! What a cool sign of hope for the positive impact humans can have on the marine ecosystem! After watching this juvenile fluke a couple of times we floated on to see a few Bald Eagles, Harbor Seals, Harbor Porpoises, The exotic animals on Spieden Island (Mouflon Sheep, Sika Deer, and Fallow Deer) that were all imported here in the 60’s and three Marbled Murrelets! which are pretty rare here! Especially this far in the middle of the islands! Wooooo! What another spectacular San Juanderful day out here, see y’all again next time!
Naturalist Erick
M/V Sea Lion