Explorations of Jackie & Joe: Whale Watching, Deception Pass & Tulip Festival

Sunday April 14, 2013

Sunday morning we drove up to Oak Harbor to go on a Whale Watching Tour with Deception Pass Tours on their open-air jet boat.

It seemed crazy that we needed to be there an hour before we departed but it all made sense once we saw & tried to put on our awesome gear.

Matt

the ladies

the guys

Oak Harbor

Ready to ride to see the whales...

A small group of resident Gray whales typically arrives in the Whidbey Island and Camano Island region in early March and stays through the end of May or early June, feeding on ghost shrimp along the sand and mud shores of Saratoga Passage. Each spring, gray whales migrate from their warm breeding grounds in the waters off Mexico’s Baja Peninsula to the Bering Sea. The round trip migration is over 10,000 mile, the longest migration of any mammal on Earth. The whales often feed close to shore by turning on their sides and sucking up huge mouthfuls of sand filled with ghost shrimp, then straining it out through their baleen plates, swallowing the invertebrates and pushing mud and water back out, leaving plumes of mud trailing through the water. Their flukes are exposed whenever they take a deep dive. Cascadia Research Collective has been studying this population of Puget Sound Gray whales for decades, and has photo identified a group of approximately 10 whales that visit this area each spring. The whales are identified by the markings on the underside of their flukes, as well as by the patterns of barnacles, scars, and markings on their backs.

Jackie hanging outside the boat roof edge to get a glimpse of the spotted gray whales in the distance.

We rode for maybe only 10 minutes before there was a whale sighting! It was the quickest ever for our 7 year veteran tour guide.

First gray whale sighting!

Blowhole

Closer

Tail side profile

Didn't notice the airplane going by until I viewed the pictures once we got home

The houses way off in the distance helps scale the enormous size of the gray whale. They can get up to 45 feet long and weigh 33 tons.

Fluke fin!

This may be my favorite whale shot with the scenery of Saratoga Passage!

More fluke fin. When gray whales fluke-up like this, it means they are going deep down for 3-5 minutes.

Whale hump/dorsal ridges and Cascade Mountains beyond

Gray whale dive in sequence

Fluke fin in motion

Fluke fin

Goodbye fluke, it was nice seeing you! Tell your not-so-friendly Orca friends (killer whales) I'd still like to see them sometime.

Emily made the sandwiches for on the boat with fun names on the bags. Joe's had an arrow to the Ziploc. Mine was whiskey girl. I wrote I love you in Chinese for Sunny.

We rode over by historic Coupeville, the second oldest town in Washington State. We went by to Penn Cove, which grows Penn Cove Mussels, Mediterranean Mussels, Manila clams and 27 varieties of Pacific Oysters. We rode by its mussel farm site which is located here for its unique hydrological & geographic features. Each of the mussel rafts support between 900-2500 mussel lines and can yield up to 50 pounds of mussels on each line. The mussels take about 14 months to reach a harvestable size, so there is an ongoing rotation. Some mussel rafts sit deeper in the water due to the higher weight of mussels attached ready for harvest.