(06/10/2017 - Kestrel 2pm Departure)
Yesterday I said that our trip was a once in a lifetime experience and one for the books. Well today’s trip was a repeat! We had an amazing day out on the water full of some of the best wildlife viewing in my time out on the water. We were lucky enough to have a day where there were transient orcas right outside of Friday Harbor. We left our dock and watched the T2C’S looking for food for about 30 minutes. The T2C’s are a pod of 5 whales consisting of T2C and her four offspring. An interesting member of this family is T2C2, a young male who has scoliosis, which is visible when you see the whale swimming away from you. Although this is a handicap for this whale, he still is able to keep pace with the family and continue to feed. There is also a calf in this family, T2C4, who was first seen about four months ago. Generally, calves will nurse from their mom for about a year before weaning and moving on to solid food. After spending a short time with the family we decided to go look at a reported humpback with the plan on coming back to see the orcas afterward. We headed South and made a pit stop at whale rocks to look at some Steller’s sea lions. Most of these enormous animals were hauled out on the rocks but there was a few swimming in the surrounding water. We went to Salmon back and found the reported humpback and watched as it went through a few surfacing’s where it raised its large tail. After hanging out with that baleen whale (humpback whale) for a while we decided to head back to our toothed whales (orcas). We got back to the area where the orcas were feeding and watched as we saw them begin to feed on a harbor seal. There were a few boats in the area and we were all sitting a respectful distance away with our motors off. We were surprised when the whales came up from a dive and passed right next to our boat! The whole family came up together and we were even able to see the seal in T2C’s mouth. After reeling from that amazing moment of looking into a whale’s eye, we watched as the whales started to feast and then began socializing. Not a single thing could have made that day any better than it already was.
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