2012 April 12 | The Captain's Whale Blog!

Thursday April 12, 2012

The 2:00 pm tour started out at Whale Rock, approximately 25 miles (40 km) East of Victoria at the Southern end of San Juan Island, where we were treated to seeing 30 + Steller Sea Lions all hauled out on the same rock, barking and growling at each other as they fought for the prime real estate position. Around the back side of Whale Rock we spotted a few lazy Harbour Seals and a lone Bald Eagle sitting on the rock looking for a quick meal. A quick jump to the South, over to Long Island, we stopped in at an Eagle’s nest. As we were looking at this massive nest, the female Eagle flew back into the nest and started some house keeping duties, all the while as we watched intently !!!! From Long Island we traveled South out towards Hein Bank where we stopped to look at a massive bait ball just South of the “Danger Marker”. We spent 10 minutes watching Gulls, Rhinoceros Auklets, Commmon Murre and Harbour Seals feed on this massive school of Herring !!! We continued our search West towards Race Rocks where we stopped in to see 2 very small Elephant Seals sitting on the dock at Great Race. We had over 30 Pigeon Guillemot’s congregating around the lighthouse today !!! Great to see so many of them around in April !!!! The visibility was fantastic of the Olympic Mountains to the South and water conditions were absolutely mint