Fins

We took a whale watching boat out of Bellingham yesterday to see if we could catch up with some orcas. The San Juan Islands are a well known habitat for them and sitings are frequent. Unfortunately, the resident whale are out of town. There are two pods that frequent the area and resident orcas eat only salmon. At this time of year the runs are about wound down and the whales are further out torward the ocean. Fortunately, there was a pod or pack of transcient whales in the area. These whales eat everything they can find. The local harbor seals and sea lions are very aggitated when the transcients are in town. Sea lions have been known to jump into boats to escape. The transcients however do not do any of the jumping out of the water tricks that the residents do and normally all you see are dorsal fins sticking out of the water. We road all the way out to Canadian waters near Victoria Island to see them, about a 3 hour ride. It was cold and everyone was bundled up multiple layers. All the whale watching boats from the American and Canadian side were in the area the whales were swimming, about 15 boats all together. We had a few good looks at them but the moment is brief. After about an hour of following them around, we headed back in. The bonus was a pretty good tour of the San Juans.
I missed the final round of the PGA do to the whales, but Grant called us and gave a report of the almost failure of Tiger to hold on. Apparently, Ernie and Woody gave it a pretty good run, but Tiger came back with a birdie after a bogie. Number 13.