Whale Watching Report

For today's trip we headed south through Rosario Straits and around the south end of Lopez Island. In the straits we saw a big Steller sea lion splashing around with a flock of gulls following him. We came over for a look and the sea lion came up several more times slapping a salmon on the surface of the water as the gulls flew around waiting for a scap or two. As we hit Iceberg Point we found two minke whales offshore. The first Minke whale we saw was heading right for us and he surfaced several times right next to our boat giving everybody great looks at him! We watched this minke whale and another one swimming around in erratic directions for about an hour. Next we decided to cruise west to look for more whales. Along the way we spotted many harbor porpoises. There were thousands of birds out at Hein Bank, including common murres, glaucous-winged gulls, Heermann's gulls, and even red-necked phalaropes. One huge flock of gulls was working a bait ball. We were watching it closely for possible minke whales and sure enough one surfaced right in the middle of them! We saw that minke whale surface one more time, but we lost him after that. Next we worked our way east and found two Dall's porpoises. On our way back to Lopez Island we found yet another minke whale (possibly one of the whales we saw the first time). We slowed down near Castle Island and saw many pairs of marbled murrelets, several harbor seals hauled out on the rocks, a bald eagle, and a great blue heron. Naturalist Bart Rulon