Three lunge feedings from a humpback, presumed Victory, at McCarthur Bank on 9/16 by Lincoln Humphry
Sept 15th
Today was a wildly successful day, watching three different species of whale! Early reports of orcas allowed us to make a leisurely stop at the Sinclair buoy, where we watched five Steller sea lions vying for space on the navigational marker. There were many attempts to jump up, with the two sea lions already resting on the buoy, until one very large Steller made his way up and knocked the sleepers into the water! It was a pretty comical time, while passengers were busy rooting for the smaller animals still trying to find space.
We moved on, and after lunch arrived on scene with a group of three orca whales just outside of Friday harbor. T36A1 (Tierna), her calf T36A1A (Drift), and T99B (Holly) were busy looking for lunch, travelling very slowly and creating lots of splashes at the surface. They spy hopped twice and Drift did a slow head stand with their little tail waving in the air. A fun show.
Our next destination brought us out to Victory, the humpback staying off of MacArthur Bank for the last week or so, busy with feeding circles and we got to see some lunge feeding! The bird and bait fish activity was really high today and made for some excitement when we thought we saw another fin in the distance. That fin we initially thought was a minke whale but looked so much bigger than a minke dorsal would. We went out to investigate and found a Fin Whale! These animals are the second largest whale in the world, nearly 80 feet long and are usually open ocean whales. There has been the occasional spotting of these elusive critters in the Salish sea with the last sighting in 2022, and then another in 2015.
The crew today were ecstatic, with lots of cheering. A fin whale is such a huge bucket list item for many of us, with their rarity to the area and overall size. It was a fantastic multi species whale day!
Sept 16th
Weather reports of choppy and windy conditions up north made our decision for our journey easy today. We headed south back into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, for calm waters and baleen whale potential!
The day was sunny and warm, with great views or harbor seals and stellar sea lions warming themselves up on the rocks. As we entered into the strait, we started scanning hard for spouts. There were so many bait balls of little forage fish forming. This fish activity at the surface attracts all of the marine birds out looking for a meal, and the baleen whales will come scoop up the fish as well. Thanks to the birds and their bait balls, we pretty quickly found two humpback whales and a minke whale. We picked one humpback to stick with, tracking it from one bait ball to the next. The lunge feeding was so impressive to see. We lucked out by seeing three lunges! One was very close to us, showing us their fascinating ventricles.
Sept 17th
This morning there were no reports in our range. We decided to make our direction call once we got out into Rosario. We stopped at Viti Rocks to look at our harbor seals and marine nesting birds. We decided to go check the can for some Steller sea lions, and there were four sleepy guys hanging out. After we got done with our first wildlife stops, we headed north. While traveling over the top of Orcas Island, we discussed with the Captain how to go about the day while we were scanning the waters. We were talking about where to look and where they have been recently.
I was in the middle of a sentence when Cptn Casey looked over my shoulder at the Orcas Island shoreline and yelled “WHALE!” It turned out to be a lone male orca, T49A1- Noah. He was traveling east so we flipped around. We followed him to Pea Pods where he started playing in the kelp, looking for lunch. We saw kelp draped across his dorsal fin, and he even did a half breach! Noah has a pretty significant notch close to the bottom of his dorsal fin. We watched him eye some steller sea lions for about 15 minutes, until he made his way back towards the Orcas shoreline. We departed and went north to Matia Island where we saw some harbor seals and then turned back to go home through Hale Pass.
Sept 18
Today was a double species day! When we were between Lummi and Eliza Islands, we spotted a large splash directly in front of us. We waited for a while to see if anything reappeared, and it turned out to be a humpback! It was early in the day, so we stuck around with this young humpback for only about 30-40 minutes. The down times were around 10 minutes and the whale would pop up in the opposite direction. Every time it went on a deeper dive, it would give us an excellent tail fluke.
We left the little humpback and made our way down Rosario to a report of killer whale brothers. 60D and 60E were traveling down the east side of Decatur Island. They were giving us amazing views of their saddle patches and eye patches, and the conditions could not have been better. These two are normally seen together, separate from mom and the rest of their family. They are four years apart, and easily distinguished as T60E has notches in his dorsal fin. They decided to enter Lopez Pass and we left them to their sibling shenanigans.
After leaving the brothers, we were close to Bird Rocks so we made a quick wildlife stop there. We saw Steller sea lions swimming in the water, snorting and rafting together. We also saw sleepy harbor seals, cormorants in their nests, Heerman gulls, and a view of other common marine bird species!
Sept 19
This morning was pretty foggy in the bay. Cptn Michael took us on the east side of Eliza, and we broke through the fog as we entered Rosario Strait. We stopped for four sleepy Stellers on the Sinclair navigation markers. Steller sea lions are able to stay in the water longer than harbor seals can, and they are able to use USWS, where they can turn off one half of their brain and rest the other half. When they are on land, they can use REM sleep. We left those sea lions to sleep peacefully.
Next we traveled through Peavine Pass to San Juan Channel. There were reports of a couple of humpback whales near a bank close to Lopez Island. We went to check out the reports and came across a single humpback. This humpback was tail fluking and pretty consistent. We spent a good deal of time out here in the perfectly calm water. After a while, I spotted another humpback in the distance! We decided to go look at the other whale, and this one was feeding in circles. Very shallow dives that we were able to track due to foot prints. We have a theory that this whale was Victory, as the behavior seemed very similar! On our way home we went through castle rock and saw 6 pairs of marbled murrelets and some harbor seals hauled out.
Sept 20
It was going to be a long trip today in hopes of catching up with the reports from this morning, so we went north through Hale Passage and then West towards Stuart Island for two orcas, T60D and T60E. The water was a bit choppy, but the lighting and coloring was beautiful. These brothers were surfacing so consistently, showing off their eyepatches and saddle patches almost every time. These brothers have three other siblings and a living mother that they choose not to travel with. This is an interesting case because typically male orcas stay with mom their entire life. But these two brothers are a bit more independent. These two have been traveling around the area for a few weeks, seen all over the place in the Gulf Islands, Lopez Sound, Victoria, and a few other spots.
After departing the two orcas, we went south to Spieden Island to look at the exotic animals that were left from the old game farm there. We saw lots of Mouflon sheep. We crept back east and saw the orcas pass up a few sea lions hauled out on the shoreline. These Stellers were massive! Once the orcas swam past, we got up to the sea lions and it was great to see the large males. On our way back we made a quick stop to Viti Rocks and saw harbor seals and many bird species.
Sept 21
We had a double whale day today! We started off our day with an interesting show from some Steller sea lions off the Sinclair buoy, jumping in and out of the water, before making our way through the middle islands. No fog today, so we got clear views for the entire trip along the Orcas shoreline. Cptn Casey was following an early morning report of an orca that no one had been able to find by the time trips were out. Scanning hard, we got a call from a fellow PWWA boat that they’d found Indy-T65A5, only about five minutes from us! With that, we made out way over to Deer Harbor, where we started watching this lone male cruising the shoreline.
Our time with Indy was in some glassy water, where we could easily see him creating ripples across the surface. Just before we finished our time with him, he started milling, doing circles around a shallow beach with some pretty long deep dives with a high arch of his back.
We moved on to head over the top of Orcas Island towards Patos, to look for a potential humpback whale, where we came across Bump -BCY0771. This humpback was busy doing circles around our boat, to the point that it felt like he was almost stalking us. He almost always surfaced just barely behind us, so we’d turn the vessel and he’d end up on the other side again. We ended up just floating there and letting him do his thing, seeing several closer passes and some lovely views of his tail flukes. Our journey home was filled with harbor porpoises and more seals and seal lions. It was a chock full wildlife day.
