Another week of our whale and wildlife recaps is upon us as September comes to a close and October has arrived. The Pacific Northwest has slipped into a seasonal moodiness; some afternoon trips we’ve moved over mercury-colored water and under heavily clouded, gray skies. Other afternoons we glimpse a bit of that champagne-colored light in the late afternoons termed “the golden hour.” What has been truly amazing is how glass-calm the waters have been, for the most part, around the central Salish Sea.
This week’s Bigg’s killer whale sightings include the following family groups (or individuals!): T35As (5), T36/36Bs (6), T46B1s with T46C2 (5), T60D & T60E (2), T69E, T100s (3), –for 22 individuals that we, personally, encountered during our tours. The T35As are not a typical family group we see with any sort of regularity, so it was an absolute treat to see them back-to-back weeks!
We continued to make several trips west into BC waters near Race Rocks Ecological Reserve as the humpback whale activity has been pretty dense there, as of late. Some humpbacks stick around parts of the Salish Sea until late November, but many pregnant females and eager-to-breed males are beginning to push west for the Pacific, either to stage for, or begin, their migration to lower latitude breeding areas. On October 3rd and 4th (especially), we got to watch 10-14 humpbacks on each trip AND experience some behavior that we don’t get to see all the time. On the 3rd, we watched as a humpback who was skirting close to the rocks at Race Rocks lighthouse was literally “escorted” out of the general vicinity by a group of Steller sea lions. At first, we thought they were all just feeding in tandem, much to the chagrin of the clearly irritated humpback (slapping pec fins and its tail, creating a bit of an audible “chuff” at the surface when it would exhale). But the sea lions quit their pursuit as soon as the humpback pushed away from the large rock that the lighthouse is on, turning back to go about their own business. Wild! We don’t really have much of an explanation for this, as most territorial aggressions happen at breeding colonies for sea lions, but they clearly were not fond of having an uninvited visitor in their midst on this day! On October 4th, we watched some GREAT lunge feeding behaviors from a pair of humpbacks–BCX1876 “Zillion” and an unidentified companion. There was bird drama, little bait fish narrowly escaping the giant humpback mouths above the surface, and large, expanded throats and views of humpback whale baleen that we often don’t get to witness. Truly, an awesome encounter. Other identified humpbacks across all of our tours this week include: BCX2255 “Vega,” BCY1033 “Merlin,” BCZ0345 “Victory,” BCX2046 “Pinnacle,” CRC-20227 (no nickname), HW-MN0524500 (no nickname), and BCX2488 “Rumble.” This is not a complete list of all humpbacks seen, just the ones we could manage the proper photos to help with identification!
A few other wildlife notables from this week are that the sea otter seems to continue in the kelp beds near Turn Rock (due east of Friday Harbor) and a northern fur seal was found out near Race Rocks this past week! Fur seals are mostly a pelagic species, spending much of their lives out over the deep, open ocean, but a rogue individual happened to find his/her way into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and was spending their time at the surface in a “jug-handle” pose (front flipper overlaying the back flipper resembling the appearance of a jug handle). This pose helps expose these parts of their body to thermoregulate (warm-up), instead of coming out onto the rocks like the pinnipeds that are typical in our ecosystem do. Such a fun little highlight mixed in with our whale action this week!
Tours are beginning to wind down for us as the tourism season dwindles and the weather starts to turn. This may shift how many whales that we report given our company’s tours, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a great time to get out on the water to visit with the whales!
We look forward to what this next week has in store for us!
