SAN JUAN ISLAND -- Orca watching is a quintessential Northwest summertime activity, and there isn't a better place in the contiguous United States to see these majestic creatures from land than this island's rocky outer coast.
At Lime Kiln Point State Park, nicknamed Whale Watch Park, you can see orcas up close as they move along Haro Strait and around Deadman Bay.
A meandering path leads park visitors briefly through the woods to a breathtaking seascape. Follow the path to the north and you'll find a number of picnic tables where you can stake your claim for an afternoon. Or head up to the Lime Kiln Lighthouse, situated above groves of bull kelp that fan out from the base of gigantic boulders holding up the cliffs -- prime hiding places for salmon avoiding predators.
For orca, these kelp beds mean food and they frequently swim straight up to the rocks. For people, it's better than the Discovery Channel.
"I've been here two years in a row and I've seen whales at some point in the day at least once a day," says Janice Owen from Tampa, Fla., one of the 285,000 people who come through the park every summer.
With research now indicating that whale-watching boat traffic may be harmful to the whales -- and the federal government pursuing limited protection for a declining orca population -- the western San Juan shore is a place where you can see killer whales without causing them harm.
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As the moon rises behind them, Martha and Steve Parks applaud the return of the orcas.
(RENEE C. BYER / SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER) |
But watching for orcas can be like waiting for the bus. You know they're coming, you just don't know when. So try taking the attitude of the resident harbor seals, Floyd and Floydett, and languish by the sea. With a good book or a picnic lunch, it's a relaxing way to take in the sights and wait for whales to make their debut.
While you wait, kamikaze hummingbirds will perform stunts and buzz by your unsuspecting head. Audience-priming minke whales or Dall's porpoises may cruise the scene to dazzle spectators, their misty spouts mingling with bits of conversation blowing in the breeze off the strait: Where are the orcas now? When will they get here? Which pod do you think it will be?
"They were last spotted near Lopez ... hopefully in about an hour ... probably the K-pod," says Dr. Robert Otis, professor of psychology at Ripon College in Wisconsin, who works at the lighthouse every summer to study the comings and goings of the three resident orca pods that live within 200 miles of the islands.
Every ripple in the water teased us as we scanned the waves. Every whoosh of wind through the trees sounded like a spout. But when the tall dorsals cut a path in the dark water, we knew we were looking at orca and joined the excited crowd around us in a cheer.
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An orca pair parade close to onlookers perched on the rocks near the Lime Kiln lighthouse.
(RENEE C. BYER / SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER) |
As close as they came, we wanted them closer. As their numbers increased, we hoped more would follow. And the babies: Watching them play was just like seeing human kids on a playground. Their mothers worked hard to keep them close by.
They stayed to play and feed for maybe 20 or 30 minutes; we were sad to see them go. I wished we'd planned to stay for the entire week instead of just a weekend.
With patience developed over 13 years of watching and counting, Otis answers questions all day, seven days a week, from park visitors. On weekends, he offers special educational talks about the orcas.
When the orcas arrive, you likely will see their dorsal fins first. The males have dorsals that can be 6 feet tall. The dorsal is like ballast and helps keep an orca upright while it swims at incredibly fast speeds. It also allows heat to escape from the body.
The eye-catching white patch on its back is called a saddle patch. Its design is different on every orca and as well as those on either side of a whale's back, like a fingerprint.
Orcas travel in matriarchal groups, called pods, so you're not likely to see one alone; calves live with their mothers for their entire lives, which is generally as long as a human's.
Chances of sighting orca from shore are excellent between June and September. And not just orcas. Gray whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins, seals, sea lions and otters, as well as the minke whales and Dall's porpoises, swim these waters, too.
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The Lime Kiln Lighthouse is a whale information center.
(RENEE C. BYER / SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER) |
"Orcas range the area and will be in a 200-mile radius of the San Juan Islands in the summer," says Albert Shepard, curator of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor. "Orcas don't migrate like other whales. It's not like tracking gray whales. It has to do with runs of fish."
There are five kinds of salmon that come through the San Juans summer through fall -- chinook, coho, sockeye, chum and pink -- and those are the times that orcas are most often seen here.
"Salmon come into the Strait of Juan de Fuca from their pelagic run in the Pacific Ocean and pass right through Haro Strait to return to rivers and streams of their origin," Shepard says. And orcas are hot on their trail.
Robin Jacobson, program director at the Whale Museum, notes that the three local pods -- called by scientists J, K and L -- eat fish exclusively. "They don't eat other whales or seals," she says.
The orcas can appear at any time. In June, K-pod was hanging around the western side of San Juan Island for about a week doing the "the K-pod Shuffle," says Jacobson. They call it a shuffle when the whales travel back and forth along the same area of the island.
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An orca gives spectators a profile view as it cruises near Lime Kiln Point State Park.
(RENEE C. BYER / SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER) |
Shepard considers the western shore of San Juan to be the best publicly accessible place to watch orcas from shore in the United States -- "I think in the world," Otis says.
Six years ago, Otis began to measure how people felt about seeing orcas from shore while visiting Lime Kiln Point State Park.
"Overall, people didn't like to see boats around killer whales," he says. Otis hopes to come up with a measurement of human attitudes on the topic.
Nickolai, a visitor from Strasbourg, France, who declined to provide his last name, has come to Lime Kiln Point State Park every June since 1999, when he accidentally found the park while attending a Victoria-based whale-watching cruise.
"I didn't like the cruise because it chased the whales and made so much pollution with the boat," he says. "Watching whales from shore is so much better."
There's something about seeing whales from shore, not disturbing them during their daily activities, that's most appealing to thousands who choose to watch whales in this manner. At the same time, shore-based whale watchers are no less greedy in their desire to see a spout, breach or spy-hop.
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An orca breaches as the dorsal fins of two of its podmates break the surface just offshore at San Juan Island's Lime Kiln Point State Park.
(RENEE C. BYER / SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER) |
Studies have been conducted to see if there are any patterns to orca travel, but nothing has indicated that there is.
"I'm afraid to think about what a cyclical nature of whale behavior would do to us," Shepard says. "This is a living population of animals that may have been here for thousands of years."
For one thing, the number of whale-watching businesses would certainly increase.
There are those who think that the southern resident orca population may be on its way to slow extinction, not because of hunting -- as in the case of other whales nearly eliminated -- but for other man-made reasons.
"Whatever issues are confronting the killer whales, a broad focus needs to be taken to examine it. This is not just a biology problem," Otis says.
In his years of research, Otis observed that the population of the southern resident orca pods reached its peak at the same time that the number of whale-watching boats reached its peak.
However, research presented at the Orca Recovery Conference at the University of Washington in June indicated that noise from whale-watching boats might actually be disrupting the echolocation signals that orcas use to hunt fish. One theory is that motorboat noise shortens the reach of an orca's echolocation signal. And it has been shown that orcas suffer more stress and swim faster when boats are around, requiring them to eat more fish, a natural resource itself in decline and contaminated to some extent with pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls.
ORCA-WATCHING LOG
San Juan Island is the last stop on the Washington State Ferry cruise from Anacortes to the San Juan Islands chain. Ferry lines are long on both ends of the trip, so arrive at the ferry dock at least two hours in advance of your departure. Before you head to the west side of the island, explore the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor (62 First St. N.); it's open daily in the summer from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The best spot for whale watching from shore is Lime Kiln Point State Park, nine miles from Friday Harbor on West Side Road. To get there, travel straight through Friday Harbor to San Juan Valley Road and head west. Turn left on Douglas Road and right on Bailer Hill Road. This becomes West Side Road, which will lead you to the park.
Other good places are San Juan County Park, 261/2 miles up West Side Road, where camping is available (360-378-1842 for reservations, 360-378-8420 for information) and South Beach at American Camp inside San Juan Island National Historic Park. That's along Cattle Point Road south of Friday Harbor. There are also great spots along West Side Road to pull off and look.
Call in your sightings to the Whale Hot Line: 800-562-8832.
Amy Poffenbarger is a Seattle-based free-lance writer. She is co-author of "Mountain Bike America: Washington." She can be reached via e-mail at amypoff@attbi.com.
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