Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Our last day…………….in the last few years, our last day has been whale-less. Not today! We had to go quite a ways, but we caught up with L pod members. This was down by the Fort Worden Lighthouse, just outside of Port Townsend. All of the males were grouped together in a pretty tight formation. It just seemed unusual to see all of those huge dorsal fins grouped together. The male dorsal fin can be five to six feet tall. There were a couple of smaller fins and a very small calf. The males were L85 (Mystery), L87 (Onyx), L22 (Spirit), L89 (Solstice), L79 (Skana) and we also ID’d L12 (Alexis) est. 1933, an elderly lady.  Five year old L105 (Fluke, also a male) was with this group. They were just travelling slowly south, taking their time. There was an occasional fish chase, but no above water acrobatics other than coming up to breath. Of course, we never know what’s going on below in the water…………we can only speculate! We spent an hour with the whales, and then had to head back. The whales continued south and gave the more heavily populated Puget Sound (Seattle area) a great treat. They do venture down there, but not very often.  On the way back we stopped at Eliza Rock to see some harbor seals that were hauled out (in their ‘rock sausage’ mode). Our birds today were marbled murrelets, rhinoceros auklets, pigeon guillemots, common murres, cormorants, and numerous gulls. Well we had an excellent season. Great orca sightings, great birding and other wildlife: grey whales, humpback whales, dall’s porpoise, harbor porpoise, otters, Stellar sea lions, California sea lions, harbor seals (and their newborn pups), deer along the shorelines, and the imported exotics on Speiden Island, Sika deer and bighorn sheep. Up until recently we had bald eagle sightings every trip. They have now gone up the rivers on the mainland to gorge on the returning salmon. We saw several eagles’ nest – they can weigh up to a ton and get to be six feet across! The scenery is beautiful, and we had one of the warmest summers on record. I hope that every passenger that came out with us this summer walked off the boat with awe and respect for these beautiful creatures. Especially the orcas; their culture, society, and magnificence. Have a happy warm winter!