7/19 - Whale-watching in the San Juan Islands

This was an outstanding day. We could not have asked for better weather for our whale-watching tour of the San Juan Islands.....around 70 degrees and sunny with just enough clouds to make the sky perfect.  

The tour went out of Anacortes, about 15 miles from where we're staying. The drive over was beautiful, passing acres of squash and another crop we couldn't identify.

Our tour boat was the Island Adventurer 3, the only double-decker in this row.  It had plenty of room for everyone to be on either side depending on where the action was.

A view of some of the islands on the way to where the whales were. Puget Sound has many miles of open water but the Pacific Ocean is still 90 miles to the west.

On the way out we went by several small rocky islands with lots of harbor seals enjoying their "haul-out" time.  They spend 7 to 12 hours a day on land to regulate their body temperature.  They also do not like to touch each other, unlike sea lions which pile up on one another. They go to a lot of effort to remain separated except for mothers and pups. The two on the right of this picture appear to be touching which is either very strange or else it indicates they're a mother and really big pup. Other interesting facts about them are that they dive up to 1500 feet and they are capable of holding their breath for up to 40 minutes.

These are a few of the numerous orcas we saw. They're hard to catch in a photograph so I was very happy to get these two shots.  The two pods we saw today are the fish-eating southern resident orcas (different from transient orcas which eat marine mammals). They eat different kinds of fish depending on the time of year. The pods range from 15 to 50 orcas in a matriarchal society. They stay in their directly-related family pods for life, and the small family pods are part of larger pods. The most amazing thing we learned about them is that their lifespan is over 100 years. One of the orcas we saw was 105 years old and another was nearly 90. They all have names and numbers with booklets issued each year with their identifying marks so researchers and whale-watching boat crews can tell who they are. Another interesting thing is that it takes them about 20 years to reach their full adult size. Their dorsal fins continue growing for all that time and can reach six feet in height.

The San Juan Islands are an archipelago located between Bellingham, Washington, and Victoria, British Columbia. We passed very close to the Canadian border, being able to easily see Victoria through our binoculars. This area is one of the most beautiful we've ever seen.

On our way back to Anacortes we passed this shipyard. The blue contraption is a floating dry dock.  It's lowered beneath a ship, then raised with the ship being lifted out of the water for repairs or maintenance.  

The huge Tesoro Refinery is across Fidalgo Bay from Anacortes. Yesterday Tesoro reached a $425 million settlement with the EPA for violations of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. This is one of five of their refineries involved in the settlement. 

After the whale-watching tour ended we drove over to Deception Pass because it was only a few miles out of our way. The pass is a strait separating Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island where Anacortes is located. The waters in the strait are turbulent and dangerous but it's the only way to get to Skagit Bay on the east side of the islands without going over 50 miles south to get to the other end of Whidbey Island. Deception Pass State Park is obviously a very popular place judging by the high volume of traffic.

Tomorrow we're planning on going to North Cascades National Park, weather permitting.