Saturday, July 2, 2010
Today took us up and over the north end of the islands. We saw many harbor porpoise on the way out. As we went by Sucia Island, we spotted an eagle’s nest and an eagle. Just off of Sucia Island is Clement’s Reef where we stopped to look at harbor seals and a black oystercatcher. Pupping season started in June and will continue up until the end of July. These reefs and the 83 designated National Wildlife Refuges (small, mostly treeless islands) are crucial habitat for the seals to haul out on. They have to haul out every four to six hours to warm up, or they would get hypothermia. When they are hauled out and ‘lolling’ around we call them ‘rock sausages’. They also have to haul out of the water when they are giving birth to a pup. They have one pup a year and like all seals are capable of delayed implantation. The pup is weaned in six weeks and abandoned. It was here that the Thea Foss passed by us. It is an elegant old wooden yacht built in the early 1920’s for the Foss family. Thea Christiansen Foss launched the future tugboat firm on the Tacoma waterfront in the summer of 1889. Norwegian immigrants, she and her husband wound up in Tacoma. While he was working out of town as a carpenter, she invested five dollars and bought a rowboat. She rented this boat out, and then eventually sold it and bought two more boats and rented these out. When her husband came back a few weeks later, she had amassed $41, and he had made $38. He decided to build rowboats! Today, the Foss line is one of the largest on the west coast. We headed west to Boundary Pass. Here we encountered J pod. There were some breaches, tail slaps and cartwheels. We watched them for awhile, drifting. When we thought they had all gone around the corner of Turn Point, we went into gear and then had to go back into neutral. There was a small group that no one had seen, trailing behind the rest of the pod. There was nothing we could do but sit and wait for them to go by, which happened to be right under out boat! We took the scenic route home through the middle of the islands. When we passed Speiden Island we saw two Mouflon Bighorn sheep ewes. Back in the sixties, two brothers bought this island and imported bighorn sheep, antelope and sika deer. Their plan was to use them as game for hunters who would come out to the island and hunt them from zebra painted jeeps. The idea didn’t set very well with the other islanders, and they gave up their enterprise. However, they left the imported animals and the animals have done very well on this island. Our birds today: pigeon guillemots, rhinocerous auklets, marbled murreletts, eagles, turkey vultures, Caspian terns, great blue heron, black oystercatcher, and numerous gulls.
