Our first minke whale encounter this year

May 24, 2023 – It was such a fun sailing adventure today. We saw our first minke whale of the season. It was one we jokingly call “Minke Mouse”. She has a nick on the leading edge of the dorsal fin and it’s one we’ve seen for years.

Just as we left the harbor we spotted a California sea lion milling outside the harbor entrance. Sailing around Turn Island we found a mother black tailed deer with twins crossing the shallows for a brief swim to a nearby island, harbor seals snoozing on the rocks, and raccoons foraging on the beach. At Turn Rock bald eagles were up to something perhaps meal sharing, but we couldn’t quite see what it was. There was about 5 or more bald eagles on the rock.

Continuing our sail on the ebb tide down to Cattle Pass passing Goose Island where cormorants and gulls protected their nests, and out to see the Steller sea lions on Whale Rocks. On Salmon Bank we had a good scan as we circled the bank finding tons of birds including Pacific loons, rhinoceros auklets, common murres, gulls, cormorants, black winged scoters and surf scoters, and a sea lion on the channel marker, but no minke whales.

We decided to head towards the Lopez coastline and just as we made it to Iceberg Pt, we heard a minke whale was found at the south end of Salmon Bank so we changed course to go back there once again. As we drifted around with mountain views all around we had some fantastic views of the minke whale as it zipped around quite quickly west of the bank. No feeding behaviour was observed – mostly travel this way and that way. We returned to Friday Harbor riding the flood current through Cattle Pass with porpoises leaping through the waves.