June 30:

We left the dock for our weekly morning trip with the kids from OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science) and didn’t have any confirmed reports of whales, but we had a suspicion that there were probably a few minke whales down around Salmon Bank.  Shortly after leaving the dock, we had word that J Pod was also down south of the island!  I truly relish the opportunity to teach kids about whales–not just that the whales are cool to look at (which they are), but to really teach the kids about history and life cycles of our Resident Orcas.  The kids were amazed to learn how old Granny is, and how much fish an orca eats.  And they were thrilled when they got to witness J1 Ruffles just poking along about 1 mile offshore from Lime Kiln.  And it was good to see them taking what they were learning to heart–they asked a lot of great questions about the Be Whale Wise Guidelines, the buffer zones from shore, and of course the inevitable question of “why do orcas breach?”  We also watched J2 Granny just in front of Ruffles, and the kids got a laugh out of the fact that Ruffles is a big “momma’s boy” who stays pretty close to her for most of his life.  We left the whales around 1045 to head back down to Salmon Bank, as the kids were going to do an experiment collecting plankton.  But imagine our surprise as we floated silently in the water while making the collection to have the same very small minke whale from yesterday surface very close to the boat!  He must have been down on a long dive as we had last seen him over 800 yards away from the boat in his prior surfacing.  One of the kids noted he must be eating some of the same stuff they were trying to collect!  We watched for a few minutes longer as we watched the minke proceed to a baitball and scatter all the birds as he “stole” his meal from them.

For our afternoon trip, we went to visit the orcas again, who were doing the classic ”west side shuffle” between Lime Kiln and Eagle Point (1300).  The whales were following the shoreline pretty closely, and as we watched from almost 1/2 a mile from shore, everyone aboard was asking great questions about the whale behaviors.  We had J22 Oreo and J34 Doublestuff a bit further offshore than the main group, and they seemed to be doing some fishing based on the many direction changes.  And then Doublestuff literally erupted from the water doing two huge breaches in a row.  Wow–he sure is getting big for his age (he’s 11)).  Then the group inshore decided to get into the act and did several breaches and spyhops as well.  Time seemed to pass so quickly and soon we were heading home, content at having witnessed such amazing beauty in nature.