To celebrate this occasion, we decided to go whale watching ? sort of a mini sea cruise. We booked on a boat out of Anacortes with a company called ?Island Adventures?. We picked an evening cruise - the last of the season.
What I hadn't realized was how close the San Juan Islands were to Anacortes. There are over 100 islands in the San Juan group and they provide perfect cover if the weather is rough and lots of interesting scenery on days when it's not windy. We were across the channel and south of the first of the San Juan Islands - Lopez - within 45 minutes.
There are an incredible number of "whale watching" boats out of various ports in this area, including Victoria, BC. They all talk on the short-wave radio and keep track of the whale pods. We were able to vector in on a pod of killer whales with only the minimum amount of floundering around. The pod turned out to be off the coast of Victoria and we traveled to them in under two hours.
There are three main pods of killer whales, Orcas, in the San Juan Island area, j, k and l. They are primarily fish eaters and are well documented and known for their language skills. The whales we found were a ?wild? tribe. They hunt mainly in the open ocean and are meat eaters. Thisgroup feeds on seals, porpoises, other whales and just about any warm-blooded animal they can catch, including fuzzy little otters. They tend to travel quietly ? language not as well developed. This group of included juveniles, too, said the on-board Naturalist.
We found the pod and followed them around for about a half-an-hour or more. There were at least a half dozen other whale watchers boats competing for the best view and second-guessing where the pod would surface next. The pod had about six members, but counting them was hard because they were never on the surface at the same time. It was AWESOME viewing.
On the trip back, the pilot took us to a point on the channel between Anacortes and the San Juan Islands where a young male gray whale has been camped out for the whole summer. The captain knew this animal well enough that we were able to get fairly close. The other thing that made tracking the gray whale easier than the killer whales was that gray whales blow bubbles underwater. All we had to do was follow the bubbles. His back and tail was full of barnecules and he dove straight down so we could see his big tail - fantastic!
The whale watch ship had a galley on board. We planned to eat on board but we ended up sharing one hot dog as they closed the gallery when we got close to the whales. We docked in Anacortes about 9:00 pm and by that time we were no longer hungry. I felt guilty not having a nice dinner for our anniversary, so, Friday night we went for a pleasant dinner at one of Stanwood?s finer restaurants.
The crab season is drawing to a close. The official end is the first weekend in September. Crabbing will be allowed on Sunday and Monday (Labor Day Holiday); usually the season is closed Sunday though Tuesday. We saw an article in the paper that said 90% of the legal crabs are harvested each season. It?s pretty obvious that the yield is going down. More and more times the traps have nothing but ladies in them. We hope we?ll get some good ones this final weekend as we have guests on Saturday and Monday.
One or about the first of September, the clam season should be opening. There are only a few clams on our beach (the crabs eat them), so we will have to venture further afield. There are rumors that clams are available on the beach at the public park. We'll see.