Wednesday, September 17th

A Baleen Whale Day

Heading out this morning Captain Rick and I were on the search from the get go, hoping to come across anything marine mammal. We headed south-east towards Hein Bank and stopped there in the hope of picking up some mammal-eating orcas, but instead we were lucky enough to come across a minke whale. Awesome! Passengers got a great look at this almost 8m long baleen whale, the smallest of the rorquals. To put it into perspective, the largest rorqual and the largest of all animals is the blue whale measuring in at around 30m. After checking out the slinky minke we headed to Whale Rocks at the southern tip of San Juan Island and saw a bunch of harbour seals hauled out on the rocks, as well as three Stellar sea lions foraging in the tidal currents. Looking at this orca prey we were still on the search for the predator, and as we made our way back to Victoria Captain Rick spotted a harbour seal in the water with a salmon in its mouth. It was slapping the salmon at the surface of the water, and a few gulls had been alerted to this so were trying to pick up any scraps that may float to the surface. Pretty soon more and more gulls were arriving on scene, and the little harbour seal was trying to evade them so he could enjoy his dinner in peace. It truly was awesome to be able to witness nature at work and passengers (and naturalist!) were stoked to be able to see this. Certainly one of the highlights of the trip, and although we didn’t see orca this morning, we saw harbour porpoises, a minke whale, harbour seals, Stellar sea lions, and an abundance of marine birds.

The afternoon trip headed out with a report of a Grey whale over between Dungeness Spit and Green Pt on the Olympic Peninsula. I’d never seen a Grey whale before so I was pumped to have my first Eschrichtius robustus experience.
Arriving on scene the whale was in the shallows as this is where they typically feed as they “plough” through the sediment for benthic crustaceans and filter it through their baleen. We could see the blow of this animal from quite a distance away, as it resembled the steam coming out of the chimney on a steam train. We watched this migratory animal (~20,000km round trip from Baja Mexico to Alaska) surface in the shallows and next thing we knew it popped up right near us giving passengers a great look at the barnacles and callosities on it’s rostrum, as well as the distinct “knuckles” on its dorsal ridge. It was awesome!
I was so excited, as were passengers of course, to see this animal close-up (see pics below). It really is amazing to think that in December this animal will be down in the warmer waters off Baja Mexico to breed and calve (if of course it was a female that we were viewing), and then will make its way back up around here in May of next year. Now not all Grey whales head all the way up to Alaska, as we do have a resident population in these waters that stick around in the summertime and feed in the shallow waters off Whidbey Island, WA. After passengers got an unbelievable look at this unique 15m long mysticete we decided to head across to Race Rocks and upon arriving to Race we had got into a fog bank, so it was pretty unique to see the Race Rocks lighthouse and its inhabitants (harbour seals, Stellar and California sea lions and various marine
birds) in quite thick fog. It kind of gave us a bit of an eery feeling, but nonetheless passengers loved it and as we made our way back to Victoria the fog lifted and we had a sunny trip back to the dock. Although no orcas today, we weren’t without whales and both were great trips. Such a diverse marine mammal part of the world this is.