Fall 2010 Beam Reach is going full force. Tomorrow we leave for our first adventures on the Gato Verde, and we’re all pretty excited to get out on the water and start conducting the research we’ve been so busily planning!
But before we head out, I thought I should give some highlights of our first three weeks in Friday Harbor:
1) Lime Kiln Lighthouse: We went to the lighthouse to view the setting and soak in the environment around it. We let the sights, sounds, and smells around us inspire us to write 21 question’s we’d like to answer about the orcas and the ecosystem around them. Sadly, we didn’t see any whales, but we did think of some interesting questions!
We ended up going back the next week to help clean up the area around the lighthouse, and even inside the lighthouse itself, and we got to see the amazing view from the top. Still no whales, but you can’t be too disappointed when you’re looking out at the view pictured left. It’s a pretty incredible area out here!
2) Â Hiking around Friday Harbor Labs:
Cat, Megan and I have been enjoying the hiking around the island and exploring some of the trails that start right in the backyard of the Friday Harbor Labs. The weather has been beautiful for the most part–sunny and not too hot, the perfect hiking weather. I think my favorite moment of the hikes was coming into a clearing and seeing Mount Baker rising about the San Juan channel. This midwestern girl still isn’t used to seeing all the mountains out here!
3) Learning! Ok, this may be an extremely cheesy highlight, but this whole program is about learning, and we’ve had some great opportunities.
Our lessons range from lectures to discussions to hands on opportunities, and it’s been a fun mix of everything. One of my favorites was getting the hydrophones out and listening to what they really pick up. And my goodness, the water around the Friday Harbor Marina is LOUD, especially when ferries go by! It was a good opportunity to hear what recordings sound like, and try to figure out what sounds come from what source. That will be a needed skill when I’m trying to sort out the difference between an echolocation click vs a click train vs a noise made by a boat or other noise source. It’s harder than I expected!
4) Rowing into town: The labs have rowboats that you can check out and row into town. Our main options of getting to town are biking, walking or rowing (with the occasional ride being offered). I’ve walked and rowed, and both are quite enjoyable, although the rowing is definitely more scenic. And I think the noise my oars  make will diminish as I learn to row more effectively–I’m a bit uncoordinated still! I’m sure all marine wildlife will appreciate when I’m a little more fluent! We’ve even seen a harbor seal in the Marina, although we’ve yet to see the resident seal who hangs out by the seafood restaurant.
5) Sailing: Although we’ve yet to see the Gato Verde, Jason took us out in a smaller sailboat so we could get our feet wet (although thankfully, not literally). I must admit, small sailboats make me a tad nervous–I just don’t appreciate how tippy they can be! But it was a beautiful day and we all had a great time. It definitely got us anxious to get on the Gato Verde and go!
6) The Plunge: Yes, that’s right, the “fun rite of passage” all beam reachers do before they set sail. Jumping off the dock into the very chilly waters, just in case we didn’t respect how fast hypothermia could set in. Wow. That water is cold! It literally takes your breath away, and you have a pretty hard time talking, or at least I did. I wasn’t brave enough to jump off the jetty a few meters above the water, but many of the other members were. I commend their bravery, and definitely respect the waters (and sharp barnacles!) around the San Juans!
7) WHALES!!!!! Â Dave, Megan, Cat, and I all got to see whales off the coast at the State Park. I think the caption of this highlight speaks for the extreme excitement we all felt. Definitely a top moment of the term thus far 🙂
8) Soundwatch:
Soundwatch is an educational program that (among other things) helps inform private boaters the “be whale-wise guidelines,” which is essentially guidelines for boaters to follow (some laws, some suggestions that aren’t laws but recommended to help protect the whales). It was really amazing–Cat and I went out on the boat with Capitan John and their summer intern, Kate. It was a relatively quiet day in terms of whale-watchers, but we still approached a lot of boaters, handed out a lot of informational packets (from a moving boat–not an easy feat!), and luckily for Cat and I, saw lots of whales! It’s an amazing effort, and I’m so impressed with the dedicated staff and volunteers who are out there everyday in the summer, trying to protect the whales. If you’re ever thinking about whale watching in this area, make sure you know and follow the Be Whale Wise guidelines, which can be seen at http://www.bewhalewise.org/
Well, there have been many more good times, but it’s getting late and we’ve still got lots of packing and loading to do before we’re ready to set sail tomorrow. So for now, cheers from Friday Harbor!
Click on the photos below to see more images from the fall program which began two weeks ago. The program started with the students and Scott emerging from overcast Seattle into the sunny San Juans. We car-pooled up and felt lucky to be one of the last couple cars to be loaded aboard our planned ferry departure.
The first class session was spent at Lime Kiln lighthouse, listing and discussing each student’s questions about the endangered local killer whales and their environment. While the southern resident orcas didn’t pass by the Whale Watch State Park while we were there, we have heard them frequently on the live hydrophones of orcasound.net.
Since then, the focus has been on learning what past students and other researchers have accomplished and practicing with the bioacoustic instrumentation available through Beam Reach, our research vessel, and the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs. This process has led to the formulation of a draft research proposal by each student which will be further refined in the third week on land, as well as during and after initial data collection over weeks 4-5.
You can monitor the students’ progress via their class home page: beamreach.org/102
Here is a great video put together by the spring 2010 students. It is a half-hour fantastic eye candy and an elegant visual tour of the 10-week program. Check out the still photos and video of springtime coming to the San Juan Islands, transient killer whale encounters, a sailboat race, life at sea, rope craft, the southern residents from Ken Balcomb’s boat, data collection, breaching professors, and more. Thanks to Libby, Nora, Horace, and Kathryn for putting it together!
This is the best way to summarize our 10 week adventure. Enjoy!
Today we got back on the boat and headed up to Prevost Harbor on Stuart Island. Val came back on board. It was an uneventful trip but we did see a few harbor porpoises.
Tuckered out after a long day!
We got to Prevost early so Libby, Horace and I decided to walk the 2.5+ miles to the Lighthouse at Turn Point.
We headed out at about 4:30 and walked, and walked and finally came to the School House, a stop approximately 1.7 miles from the lighthouse. It is very beautiful. It reminded me a bit of The Island School from the old days when it was still one big building.
After a brief stop to take some pictures we continued on and walked, and walked, and walked till we finally came to the Light House! It is a really picturesque couple of buildings. The surrounding area is moss and grass covered rock, which makes it stand out from the forest edge when viewing it from the water, as well as allowing for an astounding view.
When we sat down on the steps of the main building, to take a much-needed rest, we noticed a bald eagle perched atop a tree only a little ways away from us. It was chattering away, not a sound I imagined for a ferocious bird of prey I must admit.
We also noticed a number of bushes covered with bees! Hopefully they will make a good comeback. We only stayed at the lighthouse for about 8 min. and by the time we got back it was 7:00!
5/17
Today we decided to float down the south side of San Juan Island to wait for the still absent residents. The weather and currents were perfect for Jason to do his swim along the west side. We drifted to Lime Kiln and he jumped in and swam South with the current for an hour covering roughly 3 miles! We took lots of pictures and video of the whole thing for the web page we will make about it.
When he came out he was pretty cold, but luckily he had his wetsuit on so he didn’t have hypothermia!
We drifted for a while more and saw some more porpoises. Once while we had the hydrophone in we heard a sound a little like wind chimes if you treated them like a flute. It was very strange, but beautiful. We also heard at least one whistle like call from the porpoises.
5/18
Today we went to Race Rocks! Race Rocks are a few very small Islands, that are really just one big rock surrounded by a few smaller ones, off of the southern tip of Vancouver Island. They have a research station and a lighthouse on the rocks and the area is known to attract all kinds of sea life.
We saw a bunch of harbor seals hauled out and a few Californian sea lions, what we thought was a baby Californian sea lion as well as a few porpoises. One of the porpoises even dove right under the boat while Horace and I were standing on the trampoline. It was amazing!
5/19
More sailing! Yay!
5/20
We decided to pump out in the morning before going to look for the whales. Pumping out involves unscrewing the cap to the sewage tank and putting a suction hose over the hole and sucking up everything in the tank. Great job I know. Everyone would hope that they were in the place least far from the position one needs to be in to get the hose handed up to them. Today was my unlucky day and I got to hold the nozzle.
Val was kind enough to go and get some donuts for everyone!
We had another day of sailing and fun! The weather was great and lifted our spirits despite the lack of whales.
5/21
Today we decided to look for the fish-tracking device that Scott and Jason deployed last year for part of a NOAA fish study. WE couldn’t see the rope we were looking for from the dingy so I decided to be the brave soul who would jump out of the dingy onto the rocks Jason thought he draped the tethering /retrieval rope over. In doing this I managed to sustain barnacle inflicted injuries to my palm. I was very displeased.
A little place I like to call Barnacle Island
After jumping around on the rock for a while I still couldn’t spot the rope so we made a few more passes near another rock after I returned to the dingy, but alas we never found the rope and therefore couldn’t deploy the new fish tracker.
After returning to the boat we decided to get recordings of the Gatito driving at different speeds for the group project we are doing. Besides being something we needed to do It also gave Jason and Libby a chance to joy ride in the dingy!
5/22
I headed off the boat with Val this morning to go to Lime Kiln to meet with a man named Dr. Bob Otis. He does research on Orca at the lighthouse and he kindly offered to share the data he has gathered over the years on turnaround events. I was able to gather quite a few turnaround events and their corresponding recordings! I am very excited as I no longer have a sample size of only 6!
During my data mining someone shouted “WHALES!†and I jumped up thinking that they were orcas. I was mistaken they were humpbacks, a mother and her calf! They swam not 20 feet off of the shore. I could see their blowholes; they looked to be at least the size of my fist. It was awesome!!
After I found all the data I needed I left the lighthouse to meet up with everyone at the labs. Unfortunately I forgot that I didn’t get phone service at the lighthouse so I couldn’t call Libby for a pick up. I started to walk thinking ‘hopefully this wont take more than two or three hours’. Luckily for me shortly after leaving Lime Kiln park a very nice man offered to drive me back to the post office, in Friday Harbor, so I could walk back to the labs. He was very kind and we talked about whales till he dropped me off.
I immediately took a shower and did my laundry before heading back to the boat to look at the data I had gathered.
At 6 we all got to go to a fundraiser for the whale museum and I won some very cool books at the silent auction! Our table also got two cakes, one flowerless chocolate almond torte and Leslie’s, Val’s amazing wife, ice cream torte. It smelled and looked amazing!
5/23
Today we headed out early because we heard that there were some orca coming in toward the islands from the Strait of Juan de Fuca! After we got to Discovery Island we found out that the orca were transients. Even so we wanted to see them as we are orca starved, but they remained just out of reach.
We headed home with out seeing orca once again to work on our mined data. After we got back to Snug I had my dingy driving training with Todd. It was like driving a car for the first time, I kept thinking that if I so much as bumped onto something or went too fast the boat would EXPLODE! (“Welcome to Johnny Cabâ€).
5/24
Today we decided to spend the morning at anchor since all of us needed some time to analyze our data. After lunch, when we were all ready to rip out all of our hair and jump into the ocean just to get away from our computers, we decided to sail to a new location for the night. We saw a seal on the way. We did more work after we arrived.
5/25
Today we found the whales!! L pod was down by Eagle Point off of San Juan Island. We didn’t find them till late afternoon and only got to spend about 3 hours with them but it was a lot of fun!
5/26
We decided to hang out at the southwest part of San Juan Island hoping that L pod would head back in through the Strait of Juan de Fuca. At about 1:00 we heard that J pod was headed in on a strong flooding current but was still about 30 miles from us and we just couldn’t make it to them.
We waited for a few hours to see if they were traveling fast and would make it before we had to turn around and head to port.
Unfortunately they were moving at a snails pace and wouldn’t make it to us till well after we had anchored. But we hope that they will be here tomorrow. Maybe we will see a greeting ceremony with the super pod. (a greeting ceremony happens when all three pods come together to form a super pod and socialize with a lot of calling).
The thing I’m looking at on my computer is called a spectrogram. It is a way to look at sound.
This is a spectragram. The y axis is the frequency and the x axis is the time. The darker pink (or yellow when it is much louder) is the amplitude (volume).
5/27
Scott came back on board today! He told us that he had been listening to the Lime Kiln and orca sound hydrophones till about 2:30 to 3:00 am last night! He heard L and J pods chattering away a lot.
We decided to head south this morning to try and see if they were below Lime Kiln. We heard that they were heard on the Lime Kiln hydrophone pretty early in the morning so we headed back up to Lime Kiln and found J pod! (well one matriline anyway).
We dropped in the hydrophones and did some data collection. About half way through the day Todd informed us that the window in the port head (the ‘escape hatch’) had opened part way and half of Haro Strait was now sloshing around in the bottom of the boat! Kathryn and I decided to help out and started cleaning up. When we put up the floorboards we saw that there was about a foot or two of water in the bilge (the bottom of the boat). Because of the tissue paper from the trashcan, the pump was getting clogged so Kathryn and I bailed all 125 gallons of it out by hand!
5/28
Since we had such great luck yesterday (and the weather was crappy [apparently having whales and good weather at the same time is too much to ask]) today we decided to go and try to find them again.
A moms dorsal fin and her baby porpoising to breathe
We found them! They were swimming rather erratically and during our time with them one male came very close to the boat, so close in fact that we could see him under water for one dive. There was also a new baby with the group (pic to the left). It was very interesting watching it come to the surface because unlike the others it would always stick its head all the way out of the water and do a half belly flop. I thought that maybe it wasn’t coordinated enough yet to do a smoother surfacing. This was also true when we saw the pod resting. Unfortunately we the whales were swimming against the current, something that we cant do very effectively, so we had to leave earlier because at full throttle we were making about two knots to their six or seven!
5/29
Today the whales were far out of our reach in the morning so we decided to stay in the harbor till about 11:30 and then head out for some sailing for the last day. The winds were great and the seas were rough, but in a fun way! We all got on the bow as the waves were crashing over it and it was exhilarating! Strangely enough I was the only student in full rain-gear! Even so I still managed to get a little wet!
It is much widnier than it looks, there were big waves coming over the bow!
Right before we entered Cattle Pass heading towards our harbor for the night, we heard the mainsail come down and realized that it had snapped! The supports that kept the mainsail attached to the main halyard (the rope that hoists the mainsail) came unsown and the whole sail dropped. Crazy hunh?
Due to this unfortunate event us students got do something very cool. We got to hoist each other up the mast!! It was amazing, and kind of hard to keep yourself close to the mast when you are at the bottom. Luckily all f us were lighter than the mainsail so it wasn’t too bad.
For an extra special treat Scott cooked us some Thai curry that was amazing as well as making homemade applesauce, really good homemade applesauce!
Still no Southern residents, but we did see an interesting wet suit and flipper-clad creature in Haro Strait today! Jason swam three miles along the West side with the goal of contextualizing NOAA’s proposed vessel regulations, which, if put into practice, will impose restrictions on boats when whales are present. As our “whale,” Jason swam to show what Haro Strait is like from an orca’s point of view. While he was in the water we took photos, videos, and sound recordings, which we will organize and display on a website in an effort to demonstrate why NOAA’s proposed regulations would be beneficial for the whales. After Jason’s exciting dip in the deep blue, we drifted down the coast for a few miles and saw a variety of marine mammals, including porpoises (harbors and Dall’s) and a Steller sea lion. We’re at anchor now, ready to get a good night’s sleep in preparation for another day of searching… maybe tomorrow will be the day!
This morning Kathryn and Libby left at 6:30 to go to Sidney, a city a little further North of Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, to walk to raise awareness about the fish lice outbreak that is occurring in wild runs of salmon due to the presence of fisheries.
Horace and I stayed to man the boat during the open house day at FHL. It was actually quite fun, contrary to our expectations. People from the community as well as other students and researchers from FHL came aboard the boat to learn a little about what we are doing. We had a whole set-up with a poster, a video of a greeting ceremony (where all three of the Southern Resident pods come together and vocalize a lot) and us to answer questions.
Toward the end of the open house I got some time off and I went to see some of the other ‘exhibits’. I saw two of my favorite non-mammalian sea critters, a slimy sea star and a giant orange nudibranch.
After the open house was over, we decided that since it was so late we wouldn’t have time to fill the water tanks, get groceries, pump out and find a new port before dark so we would stay the night at FHL. Horace and I spent the night relaxing on the boat. He played on his computer and I caught up on my TV shows. Pathetic I know but CSI shows make me really happy.
5/9
We left FHL this morning around 10, pumped out and headed out to sea. The weather was amazing, I only wore 3 layers instead of 4 or 5. On the way out of Friday Harbor we saw a bunch of harbor seals poking their heads out of the water and looking around. They are getting a lot easier for me to spot.
We headed around the southern top of San Juan Island and when we hit Lime Kiln we decided to drop the SplashCam down one more time to try and find the Lime Kiln hydrophone array. After about 15-20 minutes we FOUND the array!!! Finally! We took a waypoint (the GPS coordinates) so Jason and Scott could dive for it later.
By this time Libby and Kathryn had been able to contact us to tell us they were back so we headed up to Snug Harbor to pick them up. Shortly before we got into Snug we heard that two Transients had been spotted about an hour away, so after getting Kathryn and Libby we headed out to see if they were still there. They were! We think that it was the same two form a few days prior. They had been identified as T124c (a female) and CA58 (a male? a Californian Transient).
While watching them, we think we saw what is entertainingly called a ‘sea snake’ (a male orca with an erection). The whales got very close to a few of the whale watching vessels, circling and diving. We thought maybe a seal or something similar was hiding under the boats since we couldn’t think why they would want to be right next to the boat. Then we saw the ‘sea snake’ and decided that they were probably just socializing and didn’t care about the boats.
About 5 or 5:30 we headed back to Snug for the night and watched the first little bit of “The Life Aquaticâ€, which is a tradition on Beam Reach.
5/10
We decided to head out to Discovery Island off the southern cost of Vancouver Island. We were hoping that we might catch the Residents on the way back in to the inland waters. Alas we spotted no whales. We did however see a stellar sea lion feeding on what looked like a large food source it was pulling giant chunks off of.
5/11
Today is the last day of our first 2 week stretch at sea and still no Residents! We decided to head out to Discovery Island, again, to wait and try to catch the Residents if they come back in to the Inland waters. We saw a Minke whale, which was very exciting as as I have never seen one before. They are incredibly hard to spot and so have earned the name ‘slinky minke’ in these parts, or so I have heard.
After drifting all day we decided to head back and anchor across from Friday Harbor in Parks Bay on Shaw Island. On the way into Cattle Pass we passed Whale Rocks which is a sea lion haul out. We saw maybe 10 sea lions. It was pretty cool!
5/12
About 3 minutes after we got everything off the Gato Verde and up to Lab 8 Jason got a text about a gray whale right outside of Friday Harbor. We decided to jump on the buzzard and go get ID pictures of it for the Whale Museum. We went out and found the whale pretty quick and even managed to get some great ID pics, which is much harder than it seems. It was interesting how different the breathing noises are between grays and orac, orca are much louder.
5/14
Today Horace and I went to Wolf Hollow, a wildlife rehabilitation center, for our service project. Wolf Hollow is amazing! They are huge and have a great set-up. Shona, the head of the center, is very nice. She gave us a tour of the facility when we got there and was a joy to talk to during lunch.
Horace and I were given the task of weeding one of the enclosures usually used for herons. I found a lot of slugs on the walls and pill bugs were everywhere. It was like a pill-bug breeding ground, but I like pill bugs so it was OK. About 1 hr before we were scheduled to be done, we got a phone call telling us that the Southern Residents had been spotted close to San Juan Island heading South.
Yesterday we went to the Center for Whale Research and met the man in charge, Ken Balcomb. He offered to take us out on his boat with him if the whales showed up.
Libby and Kathryn picked us up about 20 min later and we raced over to Snug Harbor to meet Ken, hopped in his boat and went to find the whales. We found them pretty quick and spent the next 2 hrs with him following the whales taking ID shots as well as doing a few recordings. It was one of the most astounding and exciting moments fo my life. I saw two breaches! Ken identified the pod as L-pod.
Beam Reach went out on the water with Ken Balcomb (of the Center for Whale Research) yesterday, and we had our first close encounter with Southern residents! L41, a big male from the L12 matriline, is pictured here.
I have could never find a good chance to update the blog. This is most likely due to the fact that I was out at sea for two weeks and no internet connection. Also might be the fact that I have too much to do and I’m always scrounging around to finish everything. I hope everyone is getting updates on our travels and experiences through the other blogs though. We have been through quite a bit these past 2-3 weeks.
We set off on the end of April and headed out to look for the whales. Todd was a bit late picking us up that day because he had to go out to buy groceries to prepare for our two week departure. Jason also got a call from the Stranding Network about another Steller sea lion washed up on a beach on Orcas Island. We ended up departing at a very late time, but two weeks, I was looking forward to it no matter how late we left. The next day, unexpectedly, J-pod returned to San Juan Islands, after a long period of absence. Jason heard the update right when we docked on Stuart Island; my heart jolted straight away. The residents are back! I was really excited from hearing this, trying to contain myself in the middle of Todd’s sailing lecture. We did peek our heads out off of Turn Point to see if we could spot them. We actually did too! They were pretty widespread, as I could only spot two females surface a couple of times. We believed them to be foraging around that time, which was 6 pm. But the next day, they were gone. No updates left of the residents, which made us sad. The salmon runs are probably not quite here yet.
The next few days, we did not hear from Orca Network about any updates on the whales’ whereabouts. We did see quite a number of other marine mammals though, such as harbour seals, dall’s porpoises, and more. But getting lots of science goals out of the way was really great. We calibrated our hydrophones, went through a behavior exercise with Jason on the Gatito, had a couple of sailing lectures, wrapped up our final research proposals, and journal club readings. It was sort of nice that the whales did not come by during this time, because it was indeed crunch time when we had to finish up our proposals. I can recall I was one of the ones that were sleeping later than usual, with my eyes popping out of their sockets from working on the proposal for hours. We finally turned it in on Friday, after what I felt was a long process of hard work.
But, before turning the proposal in on Friday, transients! We were stationed out by Turn Point for almost the entire week, drifting about, waiting for the whales to show up. It was on May 7 that we finally got to see the whales. We got the text that there were two transients heading north on San Juan Channel. Perfect! We were right north of them, heading south.  In that sense, we immediately headed down towards them, in hopes to catch them on camera and film after not seeing whales for a long period of time. We motored all the way down towards Orcas and saw several boats off in the horizon. We thought that they were the whale watching fleet out there, and sure enough, they were. There must have been over eight of them surrounding the two whales. It was much more different than the time that Kathryn spotted the whales when we wanted to go to Neah Bay. We were practically the only ones following them. This made such a huge difference for us, since we had to tow the hydrophones this time to get recordings and boats kept getting in our way. It was seriously very frustrating. But we did get a great recording of what we thought of as a call around 17 minutes into the recording!
Afterwards, we sailed back to Friday Harbor Labs in preparation for the open house that was going to happen. The open house was an event in the labs where the area is open to the general public. All the students at the labs get to show off what they have been doing this whole time in the labs and demonstrate what they have learned so far. I thought that this was a great time for everyone to share their findings and interests to the public, hoping to educate them as well about the science out in the world. For their service project, Libby and Kathryn went to a walk to spread awareness about the salmon farms at Vancouver Island and Alexandra Morton was going to be there. She was one of the leaders and since it was during the exact same day as the FHL open house, Nora and I had to take over the entire chore rotations and make sure everyone was attended to during the event. The open house was a success. I loved every bit of it: the enthusiastic kids, parents that had loads of questions, and all the FHL folk that came down to take a gander at the Gato Verde. I really felt my communication skills come out during that day, since several times, Jason and Todd were occupied with another person and I would have to take over along with Nora. Even better, was the fact that it was such a nice warm day. During my break, I went over to visit the Zoobots and Kellen’s genomics class to see what they were up to. I ate some gummi worms while investigating the labs, and learned some pretty neat stuff! Vincent showed me this hermit crab that had a mutualistic relationship with a sea anemone that lived inside of the shell. Whenever the hermit crab was fed, the tentacles would pop out, and gather and food. That is just crazy! I saw scallops also flip around and swim too, rather quickly I would have to say. But all in all, it was such a great day. To top it off, we had internet and stayed another night at the labs. That meant another night of soda, showers, and comfy rest.
It was then, during the next day, that we saw two transients again. We crossed the Canadian border and found two whales being followed by about 8 vessels once more. We were at first very far out so it was difficult to see them. I had the camera for the first time and it was hard for me to get shots of them since we were facing right towards the sun. I tried my very best. This time though, it was much more exciting than the day before. We got to be able to see them act quite strangely. For one, they started heading towards a boat and not going away from it. We thought that there was perhaps a seal or something heading underneath the boat that the orcas were that interested. But for a solid 10 minutes, it would not leave the vicinity of the boat. The whales kept bobbing up and down around the Prince of Whales and stayed there for a long time. They did the exact same thing to Eagle Wing. What was most memorable was when we saw lots of great splashes and some interaction between the two whales. And…what was most intriguing was that we thought we saw a bit of pink flash on the surface of the water. Sea snake perhaps? We all shouted and exclaimed in excitement over the orcas as they were just a spectacular sight to see, yet again.
I felt as if these two weeks zoomed by so quickly, that I did not even notice. Time never waits for anyone does it? But we did accomplish so much, and I have felt that I have grown so much since the very first day of Beam Reach. I am constantly learning, being the youngest and only teen of the group. I have a long way to go but I aspire to end with lifetime lessons and exuberant experiences that I can share to my folks back at home.
We ended up going back the next week to help clean up the area around the lighthouse, and even inside the lighthouse itself, and we got to see the amazing view from the top. Still no whales, but you can’t be too disappointed when you’re looking out at the view pictured left. It’s a pretty incredible area out here!
Cat, Megan and I have been enjoying the hiking around the island and exploring some of the trails that start right in the backyard of the Friday Harbor Labs. The weather has been beautiful for the most part–sunny and not too hot, the perfect hiking weather. I think my favorite moment of the hikes was coming into a clearing and seeing Mount Baker rising about the San Juan channel. This midwestern girl still isn’t used to seeing all the mountains out here!
Our lessons range from lectures to discussions to hands on opportunities, and it’s been a fun mix of everything. One of my favorites was getting the hydrophones out and listening to what they really pick up. And my goodness, the water around the Friday Harbor Marina is LOUD, especially when ferries go by! It was a good opportunity to hear what recordings sound like, and try to figure out what sounds come from what source. That will be a needed skill when I’m trying to sort out the difference between an echolocation click vs a click train vs a noise made by a boat or other noise source. It’s harder than I expected!
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