Tag Archives: aquatic

Minke Whale Feeding

On our trip back to Edmonds, after we left the orcas, we had a lucky encounter. We came across a minke whale. It was having a good time feeding on bait balls that were easy to spot given the large number of birds on the surface above them. We saw the whale surface a few times and then it headed for the bait. Timing its surfacing was tricky. The birds all started to take flight but they did so a long time before the whale came up through the fish. I missed the key moment. However, I did get a few shots of the whale as it was feeding although not of the swollen lower jaw folds as it took mouthfuls of water in.

Stellar Sea Lions Taking It Easy

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Sealions are not small creatures when you get close to them. However, the ones you more normally come across have a larger relative. The Stellar Sealion is a big beast of a creature. The females are large and the males are huge. When we used to visit Ano Nuevo, you could see the Stellars out on the island. What looked like large rocks were actually the males. These things are big.

A colony of them was hanging out on some rocks we came across during our trip to go whale watching. They were basking on the rocks or swimming in the waters nearby. The boat was able to get quite close to the rocks so we could see the sealions out enjoying the sun. Seals and sealions seem to be very happy when they are dozing on the rocks in the sun. We weren’t close enough to disturb them but we were close enough to get a good look.

Orcas Cruising the Sound

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While we were happy to see the humpbacks that I covered in this post, we were really hoping to see some orcas. There is a resident group that lives in the area and transients. We didn’t mind which ones we got. We were just hoping to spot some. We were not disappointed. There were quite a few orcas out hunting. They were quite scattered. Our previous orca trip had followed a pod for a long period and they had stayed relatively close together. This time we saw individuals or pairs spread out across the water.

The orcas are such cool looking whales. The black and white coloring is distinctive and the male whales have such a large dorsal fin that they stand out clearly. Getting shots of more than one at once is a touch tricky. Usually they surface individually and one will be diving back under as another breaks surface. I did get the occasional time when they were above the water together, though.

One whale was heading parallel to the shore as we went the other way. Between us was a fishing boat. The guys on the boat must have had a great view as it went by. For us, our pace matched theirs and it appeared that the whale was always just in front of the fishing boat! With the amount of orcas we saw, it was a very successful trip.

Some Humpback Fluke Action

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We took a trip out to go whale watching while we had some visitors staying with us. The trip departed from Edmonds and proved to be a great day out. Our first encounter was with some humpbacks. We have had some great humpback spotting previously and they got a post here from one of those events. This time we came across a couple of them feeding in the waters of Puget Sound. A couple of times we were nice and close when the whales dived. The humpback is great for getting a view of the fluke as they dive deeper. Here are a couple of fluke shots I got. The flukes are the way that the scientists are able to identify the whales since they are quite individual.

Seals Just Hanging Out

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Seeing aquatic creatures when you are at sea level can be tricky. If they pop out of the surface, you might spot them if you are paying attention. Get a bit of elevation and things are suddenly a lot easier to spot. We reached Point Defiance at the turning point of our hike and stopped to look out across the water. Straight down below us was a group of seals. Looking down they were immediately obvious. They would dive down every once in a while but, given how many of them there were, there were always a few on the surface. They seemed to be just hanging out near the beach on a sunny day.

Turtles Fighting for Space

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The pond in Point Defiance Park was busy with ducks everywhere but they weren’t the only occupants of the water. There were quite a lot of turtles, particularly given how small the pond was. There was one rock in the pond that appeared to be the best spot for a turtle. It was fully occupied. A couple of other turtles seemed to be interested in getting on but the inhabitants were not intent on sharing and they were “discouraged” from joining.

Fish Selection

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This post is about fish. No other reason than I was running through some shots and came across these pictures from the Ocean Coast Aquarium in Newport OR. Taking pictures of fish through thick aquarium glass is a bit of a crapshoot as the distortion can be bad and the potential for reflections is high. Since fish can be so fascinating, though, I always give it a go. Most of the shots turn out to be disappointing but a few work out. Some of the fish have happy looking faces (allowing for some anthropomorphizing) while others look sullen. You can let your imagination run riot.

Big Mouth Little Fish

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There was a tank full of sardines at the aquarium that caught my attention. This was something that was really hard to photograph but I tried anyway. The sardines were swimming quickly in shoals and they looked much as you would expect them to – a sleek, silvery fish zipping through the water. The thing that caught my eye was they way that they opened their mouths to feed. The shape of the head is narrow and clean but, when they open their mouths, flaps of skin unfold to create a huge opening allowing them to scoop up food from a far wider area. A few of the shoal would do this at any one time so you never knew where to look but they would open wide for a second or two and then close up again. It totally transformed their appearance.

My Friends the Eels

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Nancy thinks I am nuts (probably for many reasons) but one of them is because I find eels fascinating. Most aquariums seem to have some eels on display and I love to look at them. Very often they are pretty reticent about coming out, preferring to stay in their crevices keeping an eye out for something tasty. However, at the aquarium in Newport, the eels were a lot more active.

They were either swimming about (including clattering in to each other) or they were in a hole but coming out of it regularly to see what was going on. I have never seen them so active. Needless to say, I got a bunch of pictures as well as trying some video of them. Not often that they are so mobile.

Inquisitive Sealion at the Beach

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The shores of Puget Sound provide plenty of places to explore. One of these was a beach in Shoreline, a town that is quite appropriately named. I was actually about to head back to the car when this event occurred. As I walked up the path I saw people coming in the opposite direction. I thought they had a dog with them and that it was swimming in the water alongside them. Then I realized that the head in the water was not a dog but instead was a sealion.

The sealion was very close in to the shore and seemed to be quite interested in what was going on. I turned back around and headed to the water as it came closer. There were some old wood pilings in the water and the sealion came in to those, almost as if they provided a measure of protection. Then it paused before turning around and swimming back in the other direction. Shortly thereafter, it dipped under the surface and swam away. By this point, a few people had stopped to watch its progress. A sealion is hardly a rarity but it is interesting just how much attention it garners all the same.