Whale Journals – July 2015 – Seal of Approval

We’re still living out of boxes and up to our eyeballs in organizing stuff after the move. But the ocean is calling. And it’s WARM! The biting bugs have begun to abate and there is a bounty of bedazzling beasts basking on our narrow bay’s beach.

Canada Day, July 1st we were blessed by a beast indeed – an adolescent male elephant seal snoozing, snoring and belching on the beach at low tide. Terry (aka “The Amphibiographer”) and I walked slowly and carefully close to him to film and record his sonorous noises.

ESealBasking

You can see the elephant seal videos and more on his website. [see end of post]

There are other enigmatic critters in the bay. A pipe fish family (or maybe several families) is inhabiting clumps of seaweed under a mooring buoy. Pipefish are relatives of Sea Horses and look exactly like them except that their bodies are straight not curled. Adults are about 12in [30cm] long. It’s easy to miss the 2in(5cm) babies twined inside the weed under the buoy.

The mooring buoy is owned by a local oyster leaseholder who carpets our beach with the ornately sculpted and delicious mollusks. The sharp points of their frilled shells are the reason we have cleared a path for our boats – all of which happen to be inflatables – not the best water craft to drag across an oyster beach!

Speaking of mooring buoys, we are going to sink a concrete block and bring the Parrot ship to moor in the bay so she will be immediately accessible when we have some time to look for whales.

Transient Orcas have been patrolling the area and one humpback whale was seen at a point near the mouth of our bay. The channels and bays between Lund and Desolation Sound have been good places to find humpback whales in the summer so we are hoping to get out in August to sail with a whale.

LINKS to websites mentioned in Post

amphibiographer.tv short videos     Scroll down the page to find the Elephant Seal clips.

Aphrodite’s Garden Oysters