Saturday, July 17th, 2010
A beautiful sunny day, but still a bit chilly. They say that if you don't like the weather in the Northwest, just wait ten minutes! We headed through the middle of the islands, with a stop at Boulder Reef to see some 'rock sausages' hauled out (harbor seals). As we went through Pole Pass, there was that Great Blue Heron again. I pointed it out at the beginning of the season and it has been there in the same exact location and the same position all season. I think it must be a 'pine' subspecies! As we headed west on the north side of Stuart Island, there was a fog bank blanketing Haro Strait and all islands beyond. We went right into it and there were the whales! It was J pod. We had two nationally known country singers on board. They had told us that if they sang high C, it would attract the whales. Now, how did sisters Jamie and Minnie Murphy from Nashville know this? As they stood on the bow singing high C notes, the J16 group (Slick and her four calves) turned and headed right towards the boat. They were lined up and swimming fast! Now, were they chasing fish, or coming towards those beautiful voices singing 'high C'? I'll leave that up to the passengers to decide. We watched a few breaches, spy hops and fish chasing. It's kind of eerie when we are surrounded by fog and Orcas. They suddenly will just appear out of the fog and be in the front of the boat breaching. The only thing we can do is just drift and watch. We finally turned back toward the sunshine and our way home. The fog was starting to lift and we could see the shoreline of North Pender Island, B.C. Canada. The orcas like to chase the fish here into the underwater cliffs. It makes it a lot easier to catch them, rather than just open water. They use their echolocation (sonar) to 'see' the fish. Their watery world has poor visibility, and if they were to rely on just their eyesight, they would be some hungry Orcas! We saw some more harbor seals hauled out on Puffin Island, and there were many harbor porpoise in Rosario Strait. We don't slow down to look at harbor porpoise because they are boat shy. Birds: marbled murreletts, pigeon guillemots, a bald eagle, rhinocerous auklets, cormorants, gulls, and that 'Great Blue Heron'!
