It’s the end of August folks, and that means beautiful vaguely fall days mixed in with sunny days, and less daylight, but not less whales! Yesterday Captain Mike, Sarah C., and I headed north to eventually loop around the north side of San Juan Island to go look at the Southern Resident Orcas. These are the fish eating ones, the ones you probably know the most about, and also the most endangered currently. Since they mainly eat salmon, and this year has been a historically low salmon run, we have not seen the Southern Residents in our inland waters very often, but today was a lucky day! We eventually spotted them a little bit south of Lime Kiln Lighthouse. It was most of L pod! This is one of the three pods of the Southern Resident Killer Whales and has 36 members. This day we spent most of our time with the L-77’s one of the matrilines within L pod. This is also one of the ones that has a baby orca! The members are Matia (L77) her child Joy (L119), Mega (L41) her brother, Calypso (L94) her sister, and Calypso’s two children Cousteau (L112) and Windsong (L121). Woo a bunch of whales. They were busy travelling and foraging today so we got to see their hunting skills in action! We stayed with them for quite awhile in awe of their immense size and agility but soon continued south to circumnavigate the entire island! On our way in we also stopped to look at some Steller’s Sea Lions, the largest Sea Lions in the world, a Bald Eagle, and as we cruised in one of our smaller passages we spotted a plethora of Harbor Seals sunning themselves! Another San Juanderful day here! Happy September everyone!
Naturalist Erick
M/V Sea Lion