Anacortes Again
With Gray whale season coming to a close I was back on the waters again out of Anacortes. The sea was smooth glass today with puffy clouds on the horizon and a brisk biting breeze as we were moving. Pretty quickly out of the gate a passenger spotted a Minke off in the distance that we passed on and just a few minutes after that Tyson, now promoted to Captain in Training nearly ran over a gray who surfaced in front of us. Not feeling social or spooked the gray stayed down for a deeper dive and we headed off in search of some Orca we’d heard about. These Orcas took us deep into Canada the furthest west I believe that I have gone well past Victoria even. But this long trek was worthwhile as we found the T49As. As we came on scene activity indicated that they may have just taken down a kill as there was active and sporadic movement in those first few minutes. I believe this to have been the case because we were treated to plenty of surface activity including tail slapping and even a breach, which I missed… We were able to confirm the ID’s from this pod thanks to T049A5 (Nebula’s), a distinct eye patch that confirmed we were looking at the T49As. Dialed in to the right pod we were able to confirm that T049A (Nan), T049A3 (Nat), T049A4 (Neptune), T049A5 (Nebula), and the newest member to the pod T049A6 were present. T049A1 (Noah) and T049A2 (Judy) were not traveling with the pod. T049A6 was a nice surprise to see being only about 2 months old they were at the surface a lot and still had that newborn yellow tinge. After we left the T049As we headed back towards port stopping to try and find the gray whale we passed on the way in. Other boats had been keeping an eye on them so we were able to swing in and grab a few minutes with them before heading back to port.
