[Sarah – 05/10/2018 – M/V Sea Lion – 12:00pm]
Captain Mike and I had an amazing spring trip aboard M/V Sea Lion with a marvelous group of guests! Everyday in the month of May we inch closer and closer to what we consider our peak season to see orcas, but don’t tell the whales that!! We’ve experienced an incredible early season with sightings of orcas and humpbacks on about 75% of our trips, far higher a percentage that our predicted 50%!
We left the dock with an early report of killer whales to the north of San Juan Island, which is fantastic at any time of year but especially on these spring trips. The orcas were moving north so we decided to head over to their location before looking for much other wildlife. We made brief stops to check out some bald eagles and harbor seals, before pushing north.
We encountered the group of six killer whales just south of Skipjack Island, and quickly realized that we were watching a predation event! The whale swirled around, prey sharing their recent kill, and the young juveniles in the group excitedly socialized. These were Bigg’s killer whales, an ecotype of marine mammal-hunting orcas. After a bit of time watching the whales, we ID’d them as the T124A matriline, by looking at their unique dorsal fins and saddlepatch markings.
After an amazing time with the killer whales, we headed out into Boundary Pass, where we found a reported humpback whale! These massive animals are as long as a school bus and weigh as much as seven African elephants! Like killer whales we can identify humpbacks as individuals. Usually we use the black and white markings on their tail flukes, but the whale we encountered did not “fluke-up” raising that huge tail up to the surface. Instead we were able to use the whale’s unique dorsal fin to identify the whale as BCX1210 “Slate”.
As we cruised back towards San Juan Island we meandered our way through the John’s Pass and the Cactus Islands, looking for seals, sea birds, and bald eagles. We capped off our wildlife encounters for the day with some Steller’s sea lions hauled out at Green Point on Spieden Island. It was a fantastic day on the water!
