Olivia Ellman | M/V Sea Lion | September 23rd, 2024 | 12:30 pm
Happy Monday from the M/V Sea Lion! We began our afternoon by heading south, excited to explore San Juan Channel and search for wildlife. Our first stop was at Goose Island near Cattle Point on the southeast side of San Juan Island. We got great looks at one of my favorite marine mammals, the harbor seal, as well as lots of cormorants and other sea birds along the rocks. It’s always a great sign to see this kind of activity in our waters, and we continued on in high spirits as we searched for other marine mammals in the area. We continued our travels south towards Salmon Bank after hearing some reports of a few minke whales in the area, and we soon caught a glimpse of one ourselves! Minke whales are a smaller baleen whale that are known to be quite elusive, hence the nickname “Slinky Minke”, so it was very exciting to be able to spend time with one! This minke was feeding in the area on small schooling fish, and we got a few great looks at some lunges at the surface as it was hunting. We continued to watch the minke surface in our vicinity for some time, even getting to hear its exhalation at the surface when it surfaced closer to the boat. As the fog started to creep in on us, we got our last looks at the whale and then continued on in our search to the east.
We explored the beautiful southern coast of Lopez Island, eventually looping back west and cruising along the shoreline. We found many more harbor seals on the small islands here and got to watch them move around the rocks and swim in the water. As we continued our travels west, we soon reached another group of small islands known as Whale Rocks which had many Stellar’s Sea Lions on it! This was a great opportunity to compare them with the seals we had seen, especially in size since this is the largest species of sea lion. There were some especially large males in the group, and we got a fantastic view of many individuals relaxing in the sun and swimming around in the kelp. Soon enough it was time to leave our sea lion friends behind and continue north up San Juan Channel towards Friday Harbor, ending our Minke Monday afternoon.
Interested in seeing photos from our trips on M/V Osprey this season? Check out our SmugMug at https://sanjuansafaris.smugmug.com/.