Minke Whale in an Unexpected Location!!
"A beautiful broken blue sky welcomed us into Guemes Channel as puffy white clouds dotted the sky! Once in the channel we found a Common Loon, Harbor Porpoise, juvenile Pigeon Guillemots and a number of Pelagic Cormorants perched on a channel marker! The Island Explorer 3 made its way into the protected waters of the inner islands through Thatcher Pass! In the calm water we found Washington State Ferries coming and going from the 4 island ports in the San Juans, Harbor Seals swimming along side the boat, Marbled Murreletts swimming side-by-side, and a huge Great Blue Heron flying! As we turned into San Juan Channel first mate Michael found a Minke Whale swimming the shoreline of Shaw Island! It took us a few minutes to determine what the Minke Whale was doing and where he planning on going! When he resurfaced he was mid-channel heading towards San Juan Island!! As we repositioned the whale surfaced multiple times showing off its sickled shaped dorsal fin! Once across the channel it seemed that the whale began to get comfortable with our presence as it gave us some great close passes and became consistently very surface active! In the glow of the sun the whales exhalation was illuminated before quickly disappearing! Soon after spending some quality time with the friendly Minke we departed heading past Turn Island and southward towards Cattle Pass! Across from the Cattle Point Lighthouse we found about 12 Steller Sea Lions hauled out on Whale Rocks! One big male even showed our guests how to enter gracefully into the water, as he backed in slowly!! One of our final stops was at the south end of Lopez Island where we found a mature Bald Eagle perched on Swirl Rocks and Harbor Seals hauled out!!" - Naturalist Kate Janes
posted by Island Adventures Whale Report @ 7:30 PM
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