Friday, April 13th [M/V Sea Lion- Naturalist Alexandria)
On our trip we were treated to some incredibly playful Stellar Sea Lions off of Spieden Island! There must have been upwards of 20 or so Sea Lions in the water swimming and breaching right in front of us! It was incredibly entertaining to see these guys swimming and jumping and putting on quite the show for entertained spectators aboard Sea Lion.
After we checked out Spieden Island we headed north to continue our search for cool things to see! Along the way we checked out Flat Top Island and were able to get close enough to take a good look at the different layers of sediment that made up the island.
The San Juan Islands are a really cool spot to see numerous different materials that make up the islands, as well as a wide variety of ages of land. In fact the oldest and the youngest islands in the San Juan Islands are less than a mile away from each other! In contrast to the mainland the San Juan Islands are substantially older than any other spots in the area. Some spots in the islands even date back to the Devonian Period, and are suspected to be even older!
This is only a small sliver of what cool geographical patterns exhist in the islands! It truly is one of the coolest places!
Cheers,
Naturalist Alexandria