June 15

[udowinkler]

Early last year, there were a couple of large sea lions that had beached themselves directly in front of the house, Ross. They were really noisy and were really barking loudly. After a couple of minutes of the extremely loud barking I decided to walk to the beach in front of the house.
Two large male sea lions had escaped an attack by three orcas by beaching themselves. The orcas were still swimming back and forth out in very shallow water. I wish I had taken the camera. Two minutes later the orcas were gone, and the sea lions were then barking at me.

Originally Posted by rossman

I had a nice encounter with a pod of orcas while I was out there. I had just flung my jig out in 135 ft of water and was waiting for it to get to the bottom when this pod of 5 orcas popped up, swimming perpendicular to my line. There was 2 big ones and 3 smaller models. I was able to snap one picture. Immediately after this picture, they turned directly at my yak and we're moving at a pretty good speed. If I would have had my wits about me I would have kept snapping pictures but I froze. It seemed that they were charging me but in hindsight I believe they were just trying to avoid my line. They came within 20 of the yak on the surface and then swam under it and then continued on. In fact, one of them had snagged my line on it's tall dorsal but when I pulled the line tight it came loose. They milled around about 1/4 mile from me for the next half hour and then split. The whole area was conspicuously void of sea lions for the rest of the day. I was telling Shari this story this morning and she was saying that they totally shut down the abalone divers when there are Orcas in the area. Guess I should have radioed it in.

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It was so greasy calm that I decided to head a couple miles further off shore to explore. The water was warmer the farther I went out. Found some 63 degree water out there but not much life. I did run into something finning in the surface that I couldn't get close enough to to ID. Tossed a jig at it and it turned on it but then sank out. I suppose it was a shark of some type.

[TJones]

Snappy ..