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The Daily Bucket - orcas! and more, in the Salish Sea [1]

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Date: 2022-11-22

Three female orcas surfacing

November 19, 2022

Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest

Sometimes our boat trips are very quiet, wildlifewise, though it’s always great to be out on the water. But sometimes we get lucky, and cross paths with amazing animals.

Last Saturday was a standout day. We saw orcas! While orcas (aka Killer Whales) are not uncommon in the waters of the San Juan islands, they are almost always around San Juan Island, especially on its west side, in Haro Strait (Daily Kos staffer Dave Neiwert, who lives on San Juan, has posted pictures and video here at DK). They are rare around the island where I live; I’ve only seen them in real time occasionally, mostly from land, a couple times from the ferry.

Winter is a good time to go out in the boat in general, and there was lots to see this day, from the moment we left the dock. Photodiary of nice sightings follows:

A Bald eagle flew low over the water and landed on Harlequin Rock just outside the bay

It had caught a fish. After taking a few bites, several gulls started divebombing the eagle. It flew off to a tree perch on the island to eat in peace.

Marbled Murrelets were abundant this day.

Same, Pigeon guillemots

Whale Rocks is our midway point on our regular route. We slow down on approach from our usual 6 knots to barely underway so we can get a good look at birds and mammals as we round the rocks (sometimes a tide is running, then it’s full power just to keep moving forward). This time there were three other boats nearby, pretty much stopped. They were watching a group of five orcas pass between Whale Rocks and the SE corner of Lopez Island.

All my photos are at maximum telephoto zoom and cropped. We were quite a ways distant from the orcas, which is the law. I was pleasantly surprised that all the boats kept their distance and did not chase the orcas. It helps that it’s winter, not peak tourist season.



One was a whale watch boat. They were waving a flag, I guess to alert other boaters.

Orcas pass between us

A commercial crab boat stopped to watch for a bit.

This is a female: she has a short curved dorsal fin

The orcas were circling around each other, doing some splashing.

Lobtailing (tail slap)

The orcas continued on eastward toward a bay. We rounded Whale Rocks and noticed unusual activity among the Steller sealions who were in the water.

Milling around in a tight group, looking around

It’s most likely the orcas were from the Biggs population, which has far more members than the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale population (SRKW), and who tend to travel around in small groups unlike the big families of SRKWs. Biggs orcas eat marine mammals, not fish. If in fact these were Biggs orcas, it’s understandable the sealions would be nervous, and would stay close to the rocks for safety.

I took a little video of the orcas, and added it to my sealion footage of the same trip. Sorry it’s so bumpy — ordinarily I wouldn’t post video this bumpy, but it’s all I have. We were a long ways away (camera zoomed way in), the boat was moving, and I couldn’t tell exactly where the orcas were underwater. There was one male and four females in the group.



Gazillion gulls circling over the orcas over in the bay — hoping for scraps? Or maybe the orcas triggered the formation of a baitball of forage fish.

Orca with gulls diving around him (looks like a tall dorsal fin, which is what the males have)

Lounging on the rocks in safety was a bull sealion who I think might be the one rescued from strangulation last month. He has a healing scar around his neck. The rescuers mentioned he’d been seen after the rescue operation and was doing well. That’s the sealion I reported to the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, with my photos, after we saw him in late September with a plastic strap cutting into his neck. So thankful to the rescue crew for their intervention! Plastic entanglement almost always means a slow painful death for marine mammals; that guy got lucky.

Bull sealion with healing neck scar

For anyone who didn’t see the 12 minute video of the rescue operation, it’s worth a viewing:



After rounding the rocks, we returned to the dock, passing scoters, loons, murres, auklets, gulls, cormorants and other birds. A good day in the beautiful Salish Sea.

Mew gulls resting on a kelp bed. Fresh snow on Kulshan to the northeast.

🫧

THE DAILY BUCKET IS A NATURE REFUGE. WE AMICABLY DISCUSS ANIMALS, WEATHER, CLIMATE, SOIL, PLANTS, WATERS AND NOTE LIFE’S PATTERNS. WE INVITE YOU TO NOTE WHAT YOU ARE SEEING AROUND YOU IN YOUR OWN PART OF THE WORLD, AND TO SHARE YOUR OBSERVATIONS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE DAILY BUCKET FEATURE, CHECK OUT THIS DIARY: DAILY BUCKET PHENOLOGY: 11 YEARS OF RECORDING EARTH'S VITAL SIGNS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS

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