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My house is on an inlet called
Dye’s inlet. It is quite unique because from the ocean one must go through
at least three straights to get to it. It is like the hidden cove of the
ocean. If you stand on the beach you would think it is a lake, except the
water is salty and it goes up and down twice a day. On the map below you
can see what I am talking about, the red line is the straight of Juan de
Fuca which connects to the ocean. To see a more zoomed out map,
click here. Anyways, if you follow the
redline to the X (which is where my house is) you can see that it is quite
difficult to get to from the ocean.
Anyway, 7 years ago I was on
our beach expending some extra energy by building a deck out of driftwood
(which would be destroyed in a storm the following winter). Anyways,
between hammer pounds I heard a strange noise and I thought to myself,
“whatever that is, it sounds an awfully lot like the blowing noise that
whales make when they surface. But what do I know? I’ve never seen a
whale.” I turned around and out in the water were Orcas surfacing and
blowing mist up into the air. I was awestruck.
My family and I watched them for a day or two, partially from shore and
partially out in our little dingy. We watched them surface and blow mist
and if we were lucky they would begin to jump, throwing their entire
bodies out of the water. It took a day or two for the local newspaper to
find out about them and even longer for the Seattle news to jump on the
bandwagon. Eventually our ‘lake’ was covered with whale watching boats
watching this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. The coast guard was there,
there were tour boats, people were selling t-shirts, it was insane. Orca
whales had never in memory come to Dye’s Inlet before. Apparently they
were there to feast on the salmon trying to get back to their streams to
spawn. The whales stayed for a month, literally in our back yard before
they moved on. Some suspect that the whales got stuck because the channel
out is very skinny and shallow with two bridges and can build up very
strong currents.
So, the second week of may 2004 the orcas came back, they are different
orcas however. These ones feed on seals. I wanted to see the whales again
and I wanted to show the whales to Heather. So around 12:15am Tuesday
night Heather and I left school and drove to my house. The next morning we
got up at 7:30, ate some oatmeal and went to the beach. We sat on the
beach for a good 30 minutes not seeing anything. I thought that maybe they
had left already. But then finally I spotted one way on the other side. We
borrowed our neighbor’s dinging and I paddled us out to the middle of the
inlet. We were the only ones in sight and it was absolutely quite except
for the waves lapping on our dingy and the occasional blow of a whale. We
sat in the middle of the inlet watching the group of about 12 whales do
laps around the inlet. Mostly they were a good ways off, but a few times
they were within a 100 yards of us. Heather and I missed a few classes
(but not all) and it was supremely worth it. It was quite surreal to be
out there all alone with the whales.
Here are some vides of the
whales:
here,
here, and
here.
Before we saw the whales, we watched eagles.
Here is one flying.
Then, finally we began to see them. So we got in a little dingy.
My house
Maybe our best picture
Now here are some pictures that Nico
took. Better than mine.
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