On Friday, September 13 it was a very nice day. Overcast with some sunshine, calm seas, it was beautiful. Throughout the trip we were treated with the sight of a big beautiful humpback whale. A full grown female can be up to 55 feet long! That’s nearly as long as our 60 foot whale watching yacht Marauder 4.
Then we came across a whole pod of Harbour Porpoises! These are fast little cetaceans only about 3-4 feet long. Harbour Porpoises can be a bit difficult to see sometimes because they are very fast and you have to be looking at the right spot at the right time. In this case though the pod which can be up to hundreds of porpoises were spending a great amount of time on the surface.
After spending some time with the porpoises we made a stop at the Race Rocks Lighthouse and Ecological Reserve where it currently has hundreds of both Steller and California Sea Lions. The California’s are seen in the above photo making the rocks look very comfy. Sea Lions are actually pretty decent rock climbers since they have quite a bit if dexterity in the flippers. They get up onto some pretty high rocks sometimes.
Along with the hundreds of Sea Lions there are also hundreds of Harbour Seals. These little guys are not as gifted rock climbers as the sea lions since their flippers are a lot smaller and they don’t have nearly the dexterity of a sea lion. They actually have to use the tide to get on the rocks, they will place themselves over a rock as the tide is going down and will pick them back up later. Both of these animals prefer to spend as much time soaking up the sunlight as they can because the water here can get very cold, even for them.