By Jack, Lynn, and Peder —

Today we woke up at 8 am and sluggishly ate breakfast. Then, we hopped into the van and drove to UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. We hustled to the docks, where we met Joe Gaydos.

Joe is a wildlife veterinarian, professor at UC Davis, Director of the SeaDoc Society and co-author of our “textbook:” Salish Sea: Jewel of the Northwest. We received the book as a welcome to the Salish Sea Sciences program.

Cover photo from Whale Museum website; remaining blog page photos by Seth Grant

Joe kindly signed our books with individual messages in his office, then we went back down to the docks to look at the harbor seals that were going to be examined.

Our hearts burst when we saw the baby seals and how thin they were, but we felt better when we found out that their death was not in vain.

They were stranded and so a necropsy was performed to find the cause of death. We learned so many things while watching the necropsy.

One thing we learned was that they have 7 vertebrae like all mammals including giraffes. Another thing we learned was that harbor seals have some of the biggest eyes of the entire mammal population when compared to body size . Harbor seals are the biggest population of seals in the entire San Juan area.

We then came back to the dorms and collected all our data from previous surveys and compiled them into one spreadsheet to be used for further projects.

Later that day we were excited for our guest that evening, Adam Summers—an expert in biomechanics—because he had a major role for the design of the fish in Finding Dory and Finding Nemo. 

We were also happy to meet his two adorable children Elly and Abel ages 9 and 4 respectively.

We had a blast eating mediterranean food, playing badminton, and jinzi.

Here are a few pictures from Caroline:

Finally, after we settled down, we watched an episode of The X-files and went to bed.

By Peder —

We took the ferry from Friday Harbor to Anacortes, and at 11:00am we met up with longboat Captain Michael and Mate Chrissy from the Northwest Maritime Center and saw a longboat for the first time. The first thing I thought was, “I am not going to survive!” The boat seemed really small for 12 people.

Photo by Chrissy McLean

We quickly got busy with setting up the boat, getting our stuff in dry bags, making dinner, setting up navigation charts, and arranging sleeping quarters.

We learned a lot about boat orientation. We learned what port and starboard are. Starboard is the right side and port is the left. We learned about the masts. There is the mizzen mast, the main mast and the foremast.

We rowed around the harbor to and from the marina boat house. We made dinner. We had pasta with an artesian sauce. We then had a meeting about shore calls and how the sleeping would he arranged. We unpacked the boat in about an hour and had it set up for sleep in about 45mins—yes, we slept in the boat. Before sleeping, Michael the captain told us a story about the tides. We then fell asleep as the boat rocked gently against the lapping waves.

Photo by Chrissy McLean