Piper | Wednesday, June 5, 2019 | M/V Sea Lion | 12:00 PM
A bank of clouds rolled over the San Juans last night but the rain held off during today’s trip into the Salish Sea. Captain Pete, naturalist Alexandria and I headed out of the marina with our great group of guests during a very low tide! We moved north in San Juan Channel and made our way into New Channel along the north end of Spieden Island. We spotted a group of harbor seals hauled out in the Cactus Islands and since the tide was so low, they were cushioned by a good amount of bull kelp as they laid on the rocks.
We moved north again through John’s Pass and into Boundary Pass, motoring towards East Point and Boiling Reef on Saturna Island, passing by a large group of harbor porpoises on our way to where two humpback whales were spotted! We arrived and watched as these humpbacks surfaced again and again, not taking very deep dives, which was great because we got to see a lot of breaths, but it meant that they weren’t fluking very much. We were able to identify one of the whales as BCX1057 “Divot” and the other was later identified as MMY0006 “Windy”!
Divot has recently been identified as a grandmother, as her daughter from 2011, MMZ0004 “Zephyr”, has just returned to the Salish Sea with a calf! We watched Divot and Windy for a while and they eventually moved in different directions and we floated next to Windy for a bit longer before peeling away.
On our way back towards Friday Harbor we passed by Yellow Island and nearby we spotted a mated pair of bald eagles and three juveniles! One of the adults appeared to be munching on something held in its talons. We watched them hop around the island for a bit and then headed back into the marina! What a great day on the water!