Sailing the San Juans: Orcas Island Surprise, and an Orca Watching Transfer

Several of our group started the next day (June 2o) with an early-early morning hike with Melissa to Cascade Falls in Moran State Park. I "slept in," which meant having breakfast at 7:00am. After breakfast we followed Melissa for her big surprise, which was at the Orcas Island Historical Museum.

Outside there was a sculpture, a requirement for any town in the San Juan Islands, or so it seemed.

We arrived well before the regular opening hour of 11 AM, but one of the advantages of traveling in a small group with as enthusiastic a leader as Melissa is her ability to schedule a private showing of a valuable object. We were about to see a 14,000 year old bison skull -- not a replica, but the original -- that had been found on Orcas Island along with 98 bones or bone fragments.

This skull is from the extinct giant bison (Bison antiquus). Some of the 98 bones show marks indicative of butchering with tools, strongly implying human population of the region 800 years before the time of the Clovis culture. We also saw a cast replica of a tibia with probable cutting marks on it.

It is not easy to decipher the history of the islands during this era, with the rising and falling of sea levels with the advance and retreat of the Ice Ages, but this find is a huge clue.

Afterwards Melissa showed us her sea-mammal cord. In the back yard of the museum, she unrolled a long cord which had a tag at different locations marking the size of different sea creatures. Thus, the tag for the harbor porpoise was only a few feet from the beginning of the cord. The tag for the blue whale did not appear until the cord was stretched across the grass, filling the yard on the diagonal. Melissa's tangible demonstration was a warm-up for our combined orca-seeking expedition and transfer to San Juan Island.

While the bus took our gear by ferry, we boarded a whale-watching boat in Deer Harbor. When we first arrived at the harbor, the tide was definitely low.

Some of the boats tied up there did not appear to have moved in recent history.

Our orca-watching boat, the Squito, has both indoor and outdoor seating. (Orcas are not whales, they are the largest member of the dolphin family, so I don't dare call this a whale-watching trip, even if the colloquial name is "killer whale.")

The Squito started motoring down a particular channel, based on the current reports of orca spottings. There are innumerable minor islands in the San Juans, and we passed a group of seals hauled out on a rock in front of one of them.

At one time a wealthy owner of a private island stocked it with exotic animals. Of course, introducing them onto a small island that he later lost interest in did not work out well. Nonetheless a few of the species still survive on the island, which we sailed past.

Then our captain heard a report that orcas had been sighted on the west side of San Juan Island. This was J pod, and the designation requires some explanation: orcas in the Pacific Northwest have (so far) been divided into "resident" groups, "transient" groups, and "open ocean" groups. The resident groups spend much of the year in a particular area, although that area may be a hundred miles long and wide, and they eat fish, primarily salmon. They are organized into familial groups called pods, and individuals within each pod can be identified through their markings. In the San Juans, there are three resident pods, J, K, and L. This year, 2011, K pod blew through quickly, and L pod had not yet been seen.

In contrast to the resident groups, transient groups pass through unpredictably and eat marine mammals (seals, dolphins, porpoises). Needless to say, the local seals can quickly identify whether a pod is resident or transient and get out of the water fast if it's a transient pod.

We changed direction and about forty minutes later arrived in the area where a portion of J pod was swimming north. Orcas can swim and sleep (resting at least half of their brain) at the same time, which is what J pod was doing when we first saw them. They continue to breathe, of course, but they don't dive or engage in any hunting or exploratory behaviors. Here, they have just passed a group of kayaks. The photo is an accidental panorama; I took a picture of the orcas, at far left, and another of the kayaks, at far right, and they by chance overlapped enough to stitch them together.

If you look above and to the right of the orcas, just at the top of the rock face, you will see a white bench (click on the photo to expand it). The human residents of the islands know where the orcas can frequently be seen, and want to observe in comfort.

While the orcas were "just swimming," I accumulated dozens of photos of backs and fins. For all I knew, this might be the best photo opportunity of the trip, and I had plenty of room on the camera's memory card. To see these creatures at all was a privilege. Here is one of my fin photos.

There are rules and regulations for orca-watching that are designed to prevent human activity from interfering with their lives or driving them away from their home area. Recently the keep-away limit for boats was raised from 100 yards to 200 yards; a boat is to approach no closer than that radius. Also, the boat should not park itself in front of the pod's travel to deliberately intercept them. This is yet another example of the rule to always take binoculars with you.

We were not alone in our quest.

The sleeping behavior does not separate the youngest orcas from their mothers; they will swim close enough to maintain physical contact or swim over the mother's back.

After an hour J pod began to wake up, and we saw spy-hopping behavior. The orcas indulge in human-watching behavior just as we watch them.

Then it was time to sail into Roche Harbor on San Juan Island, be reunited with our luggage, and check into our rooms at the Quarryman Hall. Those rooms were definitely top-notch. Joan and I had one with a balcony overlooking the harbor, which by no means fits into just one photo.

We had a snack at the harbor to supplement the snacks on board the Squito, and then headed off to visit the historic site called English Camp.

Most of our time at English Camp was spent on a short hike to Bell Point. This photo looks back at the historic structures of the main encampment area.

The path was level, with both sun and shade and views out onto Garrison Bay.

By this time we were ready for dinner, and we began driving back to Roche Harbor to pick up the non-hikers in our group. But we had an unscheduled stop on our way. There was a cluster of cars pulled over, and pedestrians were sitting in the middle of a side road, favoring the shade. What was going on? Our bus pulled over and we joined the audience. Creatures -- eagles, ravens, and a fox, at least -- were investigating what must have been a kill in a grassy strip beyond the side of the road, and the humans were investigating the creatures. It seemed a very strong coincidence, and perhaps a human had placed the kill in this conspicuous and convenient location.

The ravens were the most aggressive.

When the ravens departed, a fox visited.

The eagles just watched, intrigued but unwilling, for whatever reason, to challenge. They watched from the sky,

and both juveniles and adults watched from the trees.

But the eagles never, as long as we watched, came down.

We picked up the remainder of our group, and by the time we passed the kill site again, everyone and everything had departed. We drove on to the one real town on the island, Friday Harbor, where the ferries dock and shopping abounds.

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Dinner was welcome, and the flowers outside the restaurant provided my final photo for the day.

 Tomorrow would be another busy day on San Juan Island, by land and by sea.