Day 62: Pinnipeds to you too!

Before we left home, we'd booked a day tour with Terracentric Coastal Adventures to visit Mitlenatch Island which is about half-way between the mainland and Vancouver Island. It's a small remote island, home to the largest sea-bird nesting colony in the Strait of Georgia (or the Salish Sea as it is now known). As well as nesting season, May is also peak time for flowers on the island. Our trip was an all-day affair and included lunch on the island itself.

We did a floating circumnavigation of the island, the perfect way to admire the nesting gulls, pelagic cormorants and cute little red-footed pigeon guillemots on such a calm sunny day. But the highlight was awaiting us. We soon heard the sound of distant barking, which could mean only one thing: sea lions! We've seen only one since we moved to Vancouver, a fleeting glimpse of a large male off a beach on Vancouver Island. We even went on a wild-goose chase in search of sea lions when we were hiking the Juan de Fuca trail. The sound grew louder and we could now see a rocky shelf covered in 20 or so sea lions. (Then the aroma reached us...)

That was a real treat in itself, but around the headland we struck gold: a lone rock jutting out of the water was a siesta spot to at least 50 sea lions, a mixture of barking Californias and gutteral-growling Stellers. Our zodiac floated past, close enough for us to get some fantastic views. The shot of the rock plastered with pinnipeds (new word for me) won out as today's photo.

Once ashore we were treated to the amazing flower display first hand. On the return journey we saw a pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins, and back in Lund we were mesmerized by the hummingbirds at the feeders. What an amazing day!

A pile of pinnipeds