M/V Sea Lion | July 9th, 2019 | Naturalist Alexandria | 1:30 PM
What a fantastic day this trip ended up being! We left the dock with reports of orcas on the cusp of our range, and decided that we would go for it! After checking with all of our friends on board we decided that if we had the chance of seeing orcas today it was absolutely worth the trek!
We headed south into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and worked our way past numerous banks towards where these reports came from.
As we were working our way south we were lucky to have numerous looks at groups of Harbor Porpoise swimming by. We were very excited to see these little chocolate chip dorsal fins skating through the surface of the water and were hoping that this would be the first of many cetaceans we would get to see while out on the water today.
In the distance we started to see looks at the boats that our Captain, Captain Gabe, had been in communication with. As we got closer we saw big black dorsal fins on top of the water! We were all so excited that we had indeed made it! As we approached we continued to get better and better looks at these animals.
After spending a nice chunk of time with these animals they caught a harbor seal and were splashing around breaching, and tail lobbing as they all ate their lunch.
Eventually it was time to peel away from these animals, but as we were working our way off scene we were so excited to see that there was a humpback in the horizon! We got some fantastic looks at this humpback before we had to leave, so excited that we got to see both orcas and a humpback! To top it off we even got ot see a Minke whale of the starboard side!
Any day we get to see any kind of whale is a great day, but on days where we get to see both orcas, a minke, and a humpback is an absolutely amazing day.
Until Next Time,
Naturalist Alexandria