The 25th felt like summer! We had bright blue cloudless sky and smooth waters as we departed Friday Harbor with a small, intimate group of guests on the M/V Sea Lion. We took a right out of Friday Harbor, heading south, and immediately got views of harbor seals hauled out on rocks and Mt. Baker’s snowy peaks. As we continued south, we had a wonderful encounter with some feeding harbor porpoises in upwelling currents in Griffin Bay. We had dozens of the small cetaceans feeding around us, all you heard were the small “kwoofs” of their exhalations.
Pushing further south through Cattle Pass, we found Steller’s sea lions sunning themselves on Whale Rocks. This time of year we are expecting to see these huge pinnipeds starting to migrate north to their breeding grounds in Alaska, so it makes any encounter with them just a little bit sweeter this time of year!
We headed out into Haro Strait to scan the many banks (shallow areas) for signs of whales and other wildlife. These banks are awesome spots to look for large whales such as humpbacks and minke whales. After making our way to Eastern Bank we looped towards Partridge Bank where we found a group of 4-5 minke whales lunge feeding on apparently plentiful baitfish. Mike whales are the second smallest baleen whale in the world, growing up to 30 feet long. As baleen whales, also known as mysticetes, these animals are filter feeders taking giant mouthfuls of water around their prey and then pushing their tongues up to the roofs of their mouths pressing water out through their baleen plates. We had awesome looks at that behavior as the minke whales surfaced all around us.
Leaving the whales, we started to make our way back towards Friday Harbor in a roundabout search pattern. We were lucky to find more seals, more sea lions, as well as a fledgling bald eagle in a nest on Long Island. We had such a wonderful day!