Yesterday, the skies cleared to reveal a wonderfully blue sky with wispy, white clouds. The last few days we have been lucky here. This year has been marked as a historically low salmon year, and for this reason we have not seen the Resident Orcas (whose main food source is salmon) very much in the Salish Sea. This past week J pod of the Residents Orcas has been in and around the islands hunting for salmon. On Sunday, we headed south to arrive on the southern side of the islands to look for these whales. Captain Mike, Sarah C., and I set out with a wonderful group. We first stopped and checked out some Harbor Seals as well as a huge group of some seabirds. Next we paused near Iceberg Point to search for some Tufted Puffins. Next to the whales! We first spotted them fairly close to Iceberg Point. It was the J’s and they were headed west. We saw the J-2’s, the J19’, the J-22’s, and the J-16’s! They all were having a great time. There was a bunch of tail slapping, cartwheeling, and breaching! And at one point a bunch of them decided to race. Doublestuff, his brother, Cookie, and a few others started porpoiseing towards the west along South Beach and it seemed that they were seeing who was the fastest! We soon left these awesome orcas and sailed back towards the harbor but not before we saw some more Seals, some juvenile Steller’s Sea Lions, and very damp Bald Eagle drying its wings. Whale folks that’s all from today, until next time.
Naturalist Erick
M/V Sea Lion