November 10: A memorable day on the water

Things have been changing so much and so quickly in the Salish Sea; the transformations are astounding. When I first started spending time up here 20 years ago, both humpback and transient killer whales were rare sights. Now, they are around almost daily - even in November! With a friend up visiting for a long weekend, we headed out on the water with Maya's Legacy today and our sightings rivaled a good day during the "peak season" (whatever that is anymore!)

Early in the morning a report came in of the T18s near Orcas Island, and luckily they didn't travel too far too fast. We caught up with them at the west end of Spieden Channel, where they were first split into pairs with T18 Esperanza and T19 Spouter together, and T19 Mooyah and T19B Galiano about a mile further to the west.

18 year-old male T19C Spouter

A little while after we got there, the two groups merged and started making their way northwest up Haro. 

From left to right T19B Galiano, T18 Esperanza, and T19C Spouter

They were zig-zagging a bit, but their final surfacing before we left was perfectly lined up with the Turn Point l=Lighthouse. What a sight!

The T18s in front of the Turn Point Lighthouse

As we reversed course back through Spieden Channel we slowed down along Spieden Island. With its exotic wildlife, it rarely disappoints, but it was exceptional today. There were hundreds of Mouflon sheep, sika deer, and fallow deer out; more sika deer than I had ever seen, in fact!

Sika deer buck

It's also rutting season, which means there's plenty of drama unfolding! This male was bleating at these two very unimpressed females.

Male fallow deer bleating

We were distracted from the exotic wildlife when we spotted a family of river otters running along the hillside! They darted down into the water but 7 of them tried to all climb out on this little rock at the same time, some of them sneaking a curious look at us as we looked at them. One of the collective nouns for a group of otters is a "romp", and watching them today, you could see why!

A romp of sea otters

Down at Green Point there weren't any Steller sea lions hauled out, but there was a gang of them in the water. This one looks vicious in the photo, but he was just yawning.

We only got a quick look at the sea lions, because just across San Juan Channel was a humpback whale! We were shaking our heads in bewilderment at so many sightings on a chilly November afternoon! It was BCY0160 known as Heather, who seemed to just be doing circles.

BCY0160 Heather

It was just a short ride back to Friday Harbor from there, but I kept my camera out anyway, and I was glad I did! Eight ancient murrelets were flying amazingly fast, keeping pace with us for about a minute!

Ancient murrelets in San Juan Channel

By the end of the day, by my count, we had seen eight mammal species and about another dozen marine bird species - not too shabby!

"We've made contact! We've made contact!"

Reports this morning were of all three resident pods heading out west towards the open ocean, so it looked like we might not see orcas on our Western Explorer trip early this afternoon. We headed out with sunny skies and flat-calm water, ready to join the search for any transient whales that might be in the are and off to look at all the other wildlife the San Juan Islands have to offer.

Just a few hundred yards from our slip we spotted a juvenile harbor seal who was foraging on some bait fish. Whenever the seal dove, all the bait fish would start jumping into the air! As we cruised north harbor porpoise could be seen in small groups of two or three animals everywhere. We stopped to watch a bald eagle swoop down towards the water (it failed to catch a fish), and also looked at red-necked phalaropes, rhinoceros auklets, common murres, pigeon guillemots, and several species of gulls.

Patos Lighthouse, with cool cloud formations behind

Captain Ivan knew that no one had searched near Sucia and Patos Islands yet, and also knew that the transient orcas in the area yesterday have been seen in that area before, so that's the direction we headed next, following his hunch that if the whales were still in the area, that's where they might be. As we passed Patos Lighthouse we saw some rooster tails up ahead of us - a telltale sign of Dall's porpoise! We haven't seen as many Dall's this year so we were excited to go check them out, when all of a sudden three MUCH bigger dorsal fins surfaced behind the porpoise - killer whales!! There was a stunned second of silence before the whoops of excitement began. Then Ivan got to get on the marine radio to tell the other whale watch boats "We've made contact, we've made contact!" meaning that we've found whales - an honorable moment in a whale watch captain's day as he gets to be the hero of the hour.

It's always so exciting to be the boat that first spots the whales. The orcas travel up to 100 miles a day and one never knows where they will show up first thing in the morning, but the residents have some pretty typical traveling patterns. Transients are much harder to find, so luck and Ivan's intuition were definitely on our side today!

There were four whales in the group we found today - females T18 and T19, 14 year-old male T19B, and youngster T19C. T19B has a "sprouting" dorsal fin that, for now at least, has a very characteristic lean, making him easy to identify from a distance:

Soon after we found them, the whales started a resting pattern, traveling slowly in a tight group and going down for four minute dives. On one surfacing they came up in a beautiful line all together:

T19, on the left, is the mother of T19B and T19C. T18, on the right, has two notches in her fin. It is unknown what her relationship is to the other three, but she is often with them:

Here's another look at that amazing dorsal fin on T19B:

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