The sounders are a population of a dozen or so gray whales who pause each spring during their northward migration to forage for shrimp in Possession Sound. Between March and May each year, these whales occupy the waters between Saratoga Passage and Possession Point, much to the delight of local boaters. When spring ends, they resume their migration north to Alaska, where they rejoin the rest of the eastern Pacific gray whale community.
A handful of sounders—as well as some of the gray whales who remain on the outer coast instead of the sound—terminate their migration altogether in our waters and do not travel north, remaining instead throughout the summer. However, the majority of whales are gone from our waters by the end of May.
With all that in mind, I thought it would be a long shot to encounter any gray whales this late in the spring. Keeping my expectations in check, I set out from Mukilteo toward Hat Island in hopes of finding a straggler or two.
Route map. A flooding tide and a ten-knot wind pushed me north at a tremendous speed but made for a slow return.
Gray whale spouts are visible to the naked eye at a range of about two miles. By the time I was halfway to Hat Island, I still had not seen any spouts, so I was getting discouraged. It seemed I had missed the whales this year.
There were hardly even any birds to serve as consolation. During spring, seabirds and waterfowl abandon the inland waters for their breeding grounds, so this time of year is always a bird desert. I saw only a couple of rhinoceros auklets and pigeon guillemots, two small flocks of surf scoters, and a raft of Canada geese. The most interesting bird of the trip was a ring-billed gull, hardly a species to get excited about.
Mukilteo ferry crosses in front of kayak. The sight of a ferry always gives me a homelike feeling.
Just when I was losing hope, a sudden flurry of spouts appeared half a mile ahead. One, two, three, within a span of two seconds! I had found the whales.
To meet three gray whales this late in the season was so unexpected I was dubious at first that these even were gray whales. Gray whales don’t frequently travel in pods, but orcas do. Washington’s inland waters are swarming with transient orcas these days (even as the resident orcas are dying out), so it seemed more likely that a pod of whales late in spring in Possession Sound would be orcas, not gray whales.
The spouts came again. I peered for any sign of dorsal fins but did not see any, a clue these were not actually orcas. The whales’ spouts also seemed more substantial than those of orcas. After a couple minutes’ hurried paddling, I drew near enough to see the whales’ bodies and confirm: a pod of three gray whales.
Gray whale diving, Possession Sound. Of the four common whales species in Washington’s inland waters, the gray whale is the most approachable.
Gray whale double blowhole. All baleen whale species have a pair of blowholes, just like we have a pair of nostrils.
Gray whale spouting. The blow of the gray whale is often described as “heart shaped,” but you have to squint pretty hard to see it.
Gray whale flukes. Unlike humpback whales, gray whales do not often expose their entire tails, even during their deepest dives.
Gray whale fluke and fin. In the shallow east end of Possession Sound, this whale appeared to be rolling onto its side during some of its dives.
Two of the whales headed over to Jetty Island to forage in the shallows. The third stayed in the middle of the sound, gradually drifting north toward the Snohomish River delta. This third animal was the most active of any gray whale I’d ever encountered. It surfaced at short intervals and often raised its fins and flukes during its dives.
Alie Perez of the Cascadia Research Collective and Alisa Brooks of the Orca Network identified this individual as CRC-531, a female who has been visiting Possession Sound since at least the year 2000.
I spent a quiet hour in CRC-531’s company, drifting on the tide with my paddle laid across my lap. She was still foraging vigorously when I turned south to head home.
Kayaking south down Possession Sound. These are the classic blues, grays, and greens of Washington.
I first learned about the sounders in 2019 and have been coming to see them ever since. These animals are a treasure of Washington and deserve to be even more widely known than they are.
—Alex Sidles