bncantrell's Journal

Though Anderson Island isn't relatively far from San Juan island, the terroir of Anderson is markedly different. Firstly, the coast and beaches are almost completely opposite: up here the shores are a vertical wall of rock, but on Anderson, we have rocky shores all the way around. I have found very few beaches like the ones on the island, but many that are drastically different. Jackson beach is like the ones on AI, but the ones by the labs are different- they're the vertical rock wall that plunges directly into the sound without stopping.
The trees even seem different here. I don't think that they are, but San Juan island reminds me a lot of the Northern California or Southern Oregon, while Anderson Island has the familiar lush green feeling that most of Western Washington has.
I've also noticed that the wildlife in the very southern sound is much different than it is in the north. Down south there aren't as many seals or sea lions, and I've definitely never seen a harbor porpoise down there. I believe that this is because there's less activity and less productivity down in the south sound than up here in the north due to the much greater amount of water that is exchanged from the ocean through the straits. In contrast, the water in the south sound has a much longer turnover rate. And there can be whales up here, and I've never seen a whale down in the south sound.
Both of these areas are stunningly beautiful and wonderfully diverse, but for being so close geographically I see many differences between them.

About two weeks ago I went out in the channel with Garrett, Hannah, and Shelley to set shrimp down into the channel and film them being eaten for their MERE project. We left before lunch, and it was a beautifully sunny day, and slightly breezy. We saw a ton of wildlife, much more than can usually be seen from shore. We saw Dahl's porpoises, Harbor porpoises, and Steller's sea lions: all right around the shallow shoal off the harbor. I had never seen so many large marine mammals before. The Porpoises were swimming parallel to our boat for a short time after they just appeared from beneath the waves around us. We also saw a lot of birds on the water; some that were really cool dunked below the water as we went by and didn't come up for some time. We also saw some Glaucous wing gulls and Western Gulls. When we were setting the shrimp apparatus, the Steller's sea lion came up to investigate our boat. It was a beautiful day on the channel and we saw some great charismatic megafauna. It could only have been better if we had seen some killer whales!