Lauren | M/V Kestrel | Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 | 2:00 PM
The M/V Kestrel cruised out of Friday Harbor, the water was flat calm and it was 75° and sunny. We headed south. Our first stop was to Deadmans on the southeast coast of Lopez Island to view two bald eagles sitting on top of a rock. This bald eagle encounter was quite special, because we got the unique opportunity to view both an adult and a juvenile bald eagle sitting right next to one another. Bald eagles do not get that signature white bald head and brown body until around the age of 5. Before then they often get mistaken for golden eagles as they are an all brown color with light colored spots and splotches on them. This particular juvenile’s white head was starting to appear, which makes me think this bird was probably around the age 4.
We left these eagles and headed over to Whale Rocks, our most famous haul out site for Steller’s Sea Lions. We watched these goofy pinnipeds as they argued over the best place to sit and roared in each other's faces. We cruised southwest into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, headed for Hein Bank. As we made our way over to Hein we started seeing blows in the distance. We slowly made our way on scene with a humpback known as BCY0409 “Yogi.” Yogi is a North Pacific Humpback Whale from the Maui breeding population. They are at least 23 years of age, being first sighted back in 2002. We do not have a confirmed sex on Yogi, but considering we’ve never seen them with a calf, Yogi is likely a male. We had a great encounter with this humpback as we witnessed multiple fluke dives from several different angles. The water was so calm and Yogi wasn’t moving very fast so we got the opportunity to sit with our engines off just listening to Yogi breathe. As we made our way back to Friday Harbor, we decided to stop at Salmon Bank to look for a Minke that had been reported earlier. We searched for this Minke for several minutes but never got clear eyes on it. I guess the universe figured we were al-whaledy spoiled enough.