By: Wats, Leanne, Mia

This morning we woke up to the pleasant surprise of a cleaning job sign up. We spent the morning hard at work cleaning every part of the dorms from top to bottom. We had to leave the dorms better than we found them, as the Spring Street students will be returning soon.

Once again, there was bagels and cereal on the menu for breakfast. We went through all the cream cheese (shocker!) it is a hot commodity.

Next we sat down to write many thank you cards to show our appreciation for the many people who were with us on this journey. It was an insightful reflection on all of our guests and the people we have met on this trip.

After working so hard on thank you cards, we replenished our energy with a final lunch. Many people chose to eat the leftover pasta salad. We then departed for a fun afternoon at San Juan County Park Beach, to loosen up for our presentation later in the afternoon. It was too cold to swim, so many of us chose to relax on the rocky bluff. When we were descending the rocky bluff, one of us tripped over a short king.

We then returned from the beach to collect our algae pressing that we made earlier in the week with Dr. Guenther. Unfortunately some of our pressings were moldy, but for the most part we were happy to see how they turned out!

Then we settled down for the final push on our projects, which we will be presenting at 5:00pm today to an audience of our cohort, families, and other guests we met during the camp. After that, we will be having a barbecue and then head to the beach for a final sunset together. There, we will sit by the fire, and roast marshmallows.

Thank you to Emma, Adam, Caroline, Tom, Cassandra, Riley, Cara and Misty. Thank you to all of our amazing guests who have taught us so much, and thank you to our fellow campers. We will all miss you so much and we hope you have a great rest of your summer!

By Sasha, Alaina, Josephine, Sid

We spent the morning testing kelp and seaweeds with Lucy Hensley, an undergrad student at Bates College. We cut out standardized shapes of bull kelp (and other seaweeds) and used their MTS machine to pull the seaweed apart to test the strain and stress. Seeing and participating in the data collection at Friday Harbor Labs was super interesting.

There were lots of cool ratfish in the labs!

Later in the afternoon, we headed to Eagle Cove for a fun beach day, where we had sandwiches and graham crackers for lunch. The water was super cold, but we braved it anyway.

We took advantage of the low tide to draw a big fish on the sand. Super fun!

We went back home the long way to see Mount Baker from the coast; it was finally a clear day! Seeing the mountain even from so far away was breathtaking.

For dinner, we ate fried rice with the amazing Aisha Rashid, who works for Wild Orca. The day was super fun, and the good weather put us all in a great mood. We are going night-lighting later tonight back at Friday Harbor Labs, super exciting!

Blog by Akemi, Evan, Maddie, and Ella

If the title wasn’t fin-tastic enough to catch your eye, maybe this hook’ll reel you in as a tail end to the month of July…

To start off the morning… we SLEPT IN! Yippee! We left for Lime Kiln State Park at 11:45am and met up with Erin Corra, a tour guide at Lime Kiln state park, who enthusiastically showed us around the park. Erin Corra has been an interpretive specialist since 2007 and then became the founder and program director of the Friends of Lime Kiln Society (FOLKS) for short, where she continued to educate the public on Southern Resident Killer Whales. She is genuinely excited to share the wonders of orcas with the public, and has been a driving force in educating people about their habitat and how to protect them. She gave us a better insight of the inner workings at Lime Kiln State Park! Additionally, Erin walked us around the trail towards the lighthouse, educating us on trees such as Madronas, Douglas Firs, and Big Leaf Maples. We also observed about three whales in the distance, coming to the surface for air, and even breaching a couple times! After watching the whales for a while (definitely humpbacks, according to Adam and Emma) we went further, to the actual lighthouse! Erin introduced us to the hydrophone, a non-invasive way to observe whale echolocation, where we can listen on land. Afterwards, we sat on rocks outside the lighthouse, eating lunch, while Erin took six of us up to the top of the lighthouse at a time! It was a beautiful view.

After a very interesting walk around Lime Kiln and a great whale spotting, we headed to Snug Harbor Resorts, the home of Soundwatch, an all-female group of researchers who monitor orcas and help educate boaters about viewing rules. Soundwatch is a derivative of the Whale Museum, and goes out on the water every day to help maintain guidelines on watching the orcas and report boaters who violate the laws. They also conduct their own research on the orcas that help to provide information for the Whale Museum and NOAA. While we were there, we learned about rangefinders, the devices used for tracking the distance between boats and the whales they’re watching. These are used to determine whether or not boats are violating the 400 yd bubble around the orcas, which is used to protect the animals from boat harm. We also learned about the boat they use to conduct their research and stop boaters from getting too close to the whales. Lastly, we got more of an insight as to how they help whales who have been entangled. Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience and we all learned a lot about orca research and conservation!

After meeting with the crew from Soundwatch, our fearless leaders Adam and Emma took us to get ice cream in Roche Harbor! Many of us had not yet been to Roche Harbor so it was great to see one of the other established towns on the island. It had a very different feel than Friday Harbor, it had a few small shops and was overall a lot smaller than Friday Harbor. It was a fun change and a fun surprise that we got to stop for ice cream! Thanks Adam and Emma! It was a cool treat, and very delightful.