[Saturday, 10/6/18 - M/V Sea Lion - Erick]
This Saturday, Captain Mike, Rachel, and I took a full crew of passengers out on M/V Sea Lion on a beautiful fall day! We headed out on this sunny afternoon and started going south. We made our first stop at Turn Rocks just on the other side of Turn Island. Here we saw our first marine mammals, some Harbor Seals! There was a bunch of them sunning themselves on the rocks. These little rock sausages are so adorable and sleepily looked back at us as we watched them. Next, we headed further south to Cattle Pass and made our next stop at Whale Rocks where we saw tons of Steller Sea Lions! These pinnipeds are massive with the adult males weighing over a ton! We watched them walk all over each other, growl, then go right back to sleepy time on the rocks. Steller Sea Lions are the largest ‘eared seals’ in the world and they are my favorite animals out here to watch. Next, we headed west along the shoreline of San Juan Island and as we passed Lime Kiln Lighthouse we headed across Haro Strait to the Canadian side and just as we got to the Kelp Reef area (which is a rocky shallow area with a large kelp forest) we saw some blows! As we approached we saw that these were a group of orcas (killer whales) traveling towards the kelp forest!
This group is part of the type that feed on the marine mammals in the area. We call these Bigg’s or Transient Orcas! This was a mixture of two different families or matrilines that often travel together. They are called the T65A’s and T49A’s. This first group was one of the matriarchs with some of the younger ones. We watched them catch some prey in the kelp forest and then one of them spyhopped! Next we moved onto the next group along the Sidney Island. This group had another one of the matriarchs with a tiny baby orca! We watched this group along with a juvenile male hunt within another kelp forest in between Sidney and Halibut Islands! For our final stop we watched the last group that had the remaining members of the two families including two large males tracing the southern shoreline of Stuart Island. After we got great looks at these orcas too we moved east to Spieden Island where we saw the exotic animals that were brought there in the 70’s! Here we see Mouflon Sheep, Fallow Deer, and Sika Deer! What an amazing day with so many orcas!!!
Naturalist Erick