Since 1994, this course has been presenting an overview of the natural history of the San Juan Islands and the inland marine waters of Washington State and Southern British Columbia, or the Salish Sea. The course includes an in-depth treatment of the ecology and conservation of local marine species. The information is presented with a mix of lectures, field trips and hands-on learning. Instructors are highly trained naturalists, regional environmental educators and scientists. The objective of this training is to provide a learning experience that assists the adult graduate to be qualified regionally as a professional or volunteer naturalist. Continuing Education credits through Western Washington University are available with advance arrangement. Clock Hours are available through Northwest ESD 189 for teachers. There are no prerequisites for acceptance into the program, other than high school graduation and a sincere interest to learn the material. The Whale Watch Operators Association Northwest endorses this course for Naturalist Certification. An additional ten-hour practicum is required for this and may be arranged during training.

The current program meets on Saturdays, March 29, April 5, 12, 26, & May 3, generally from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM for presentations, labs & field trips. These day-long sessions are followed by a closing day that includes a wildlife cruise and graduation celebration at The Whale Museum on Sunday, May 4. Note: There is no class on April 19, so those who wish may attend the "Welcome the Whales" Day in Langley on Whidbey Island, an annual celebration hosted by Orca Network. (The purpose of the festival is to welcome Gray Whales back to the Salish Sea.)

Classes will be held at various locations in the San Juan Islands.

Directions from the ferry landing:
Friday Harbor High School: Go approximately 3 blocks up Spring St. to Blair Street and turn right. Go about three blocks (past the Post Office and Friday Harbor Middle School), Friday Harbor High School will be on your left.
The Whale Museum: Go one block up Spring Street to First Street, turn right, proceed one and a half blocks to the Museum.

How much does it cost?

The tuition is $350 and includes the five sessions, a cruise, an orca adoption, and all materials. A minimum $175 deposit must be paid at the time of registration to insure your space in the program. The remainder of the tuition ($175) is due no later than March 24. Full payment is also accepted at the time of registration (please see the refund policy below). Registered participants may purchase optional books from the Museum store at a 15% discount during the training. We accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

The $175 deposit fee is only refundable if you cancel and your space in the program is replaced with a student from the waiting list through March 14. After that date, the deposit is non-refundable. The Whale Museum reserves the right to cancel any program. If the program is canceled by the Museum, a full refund will be issued to you.

You will take field trips to San Juan Islands parks, waters and shorelines. You should dress for a variety of conditions including wind, cold, rain, and sun. Transportation is provided by The Whale Museum through San Juan Transit therefore it is not necessary to bring your car to the island. Parking is available at the Anacortes Ferry Terminal for a fee. Please contact Washington State Ferries for details at www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries. (Suggestions: bring a sack lunch, camera, binoculars, hand lens, field guides, and any other naturalist tools.)

Registration has now closed for the Spring 2008 class. For information about future class offerings, please contact the education curator. Once registration opens for the next offering, applications are processed in the order they are received. You will not be registered if a deposit does not accompany your application. You will be notified with a confirmation letter once your registration has been processed. The class maximum is 24 students and fills up quickly.

For more information, contact:

Cindy Hansen, Education Curator

The Whale Museum

P. O. Box 945

Friday Harbor WA 98250

phone: (360) 378-4710, ext. 23

email: cindy@whalemuseum.org

Day One:

The Whale Museum’s Marine Naturalist Training Course began today with a series of lectures at Friday Harbor High School. Out of the 20 students enrolled, a few of us work at or volunteer with the Whale Museum; others, who came from as far away as Portland, Oregon, came to enhance or change their current careers and most of us came with a desire to engage more meaningfully and actively in our surrounding environment. Upon completion of the course graduates will be certified naturalists eligible to join the newly forming, Salish Sea Association of Marine Naturalists (SSAMN).

Cindy Hansen, the Museum’s Education Curator, welcomed the class followed by Shann Weston’s introduction to the concept of the Salish Sea, an ecosystem that defies international boundaries to include the Strait of Georgia, Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. Shann spoke about having a sense of place and warned us about videophilia, the tendency for we “screen fixated” humans to get our “nature” from nature programs on television or online instead of going outside. Later when I was talking to fellow student Kim from Orcas about which orca she might want to adopt (an orca whale adoption is included with the course), I found myself recommending Ruffles (J-1) or Granny (J-2) from J Pod. As a selling point, I mentioned that they were both movie stars due to their roles in the movie Free Willy II telling Kim that she could always watch the movie if she wanted see them. I realized as soon as I said it that, “Oh no!” I was recommending celebrity whale videophilia!

Greg Hertel gave an overview of the geology of the Salish Sea. He explained how a mosaic of materials, some traveling as far as equatorial sea-beds in the tropical Pacific, were pressured by volcanic, tectonic and glacial forces to form our unique landscape. Did you know that tectonic plates move at about the same rate fingernails grow? Greg shared a quote from William Durant, “Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.” Our options when confronted by change? Move, adapt or die.

Cindy gave us an overview of the Salish Sea Orca or Southern Residents (J, K & L Pods). She made several cases for the possibilities of Orca culture including the greeting ceremonies of Southern Residents, Orca language and the fact that Orca, Long Finned Pilot Whales and humans are the only known creatures to go through menopause. What this means is that Granny and women my age have social value beyond breeding. I was glad to hear it although I have never doubted it regarding the matriarch of J Pod. Finally, Dave Ellifrit from the Center for Whale Research concluded the lectures with a summary of Orca identification using photo ID. He gave us tips for recognizing individuals among our local Orca populations. We finished up at The Whale Museum where Exhibit Hall Manager Nikki Ruggiero gave us a tour.

Day Two:

As someone who rarely leaves Friday Harbor, it was a treat to go to Orcas today for the second session of this spring’s Marine Naturalist Training Program. Our first lecturer Joe Gaydos cleared up a long-standing confusion of mine by explaining the difference between river otters and sea otters. River otters are smaller with long tails and they come out of the water. They travel in salt water, fresh water and on land. Never mind that we don’t have rivers around here, we do have river otters. We have sea otters, too. Sea otters are bigger, have short tails, stay in the sea, and strike that iconic otter pose floating on their backs nibbling on sea urchins (or some other specialty). River otters prefer fish and eat right side up. Speaker Kathy Fletcher from People for Puget Sound made the point that Puget Sound has just as complex an ecosystem as the more typically glamorized tropical rainforests and that ours is an invertebrate rich ecosystem. I thought she had the quote of the day with, “Invertebrates are the backbone of the ecosystem.” In a discussion about how to get people engaged in environmental issues one woman mentioned that she liked the approach of including humans in the equation as part of the ecosystem. I asked quietly, but not quietly enough for Cindy to miss, “Aren’t we one of those invasive species that needs to be eradicated?” Science charts agree: as human population goes up, biodiversity goes down. Using your canvas shopping bag is all well & good but beware the pitter-patter of little carbon footprints. When it comes to motherhood and apple pie, just stick with the pie. We ended this week’s training with Mike O’Connell giving us a tour of Glenwood Springs Salmon Hatchery. Ideally situated where a creek empties into a bay the hatchery carefully mimics natural systems. The hatchery is partnered with Long Live the Kings -- a private, nonprofit organization committed to restoring wild salmon to the Pacific Northwest.

Day Three:

The third Marine Naturalist Training today was a field trip to Lime Kiln Park and then to Cattle Point. Greg Hertel pointed out local geology and explained the difference between subduction zone volcanoes, the kind we have here that are full of churned debris, gas and are highly explosive and hot spot volcanoes like they have in Hawaii that calmly spew out liquid lava. The Northwest's Mt St Helen’s and Italy's Mt Vesuvius (that caught the people of Pompeii by surprise) are subduction zone volcanoes. Our nearest subduction zone volcano, Mt Baker, was especially resplendent today flanked with plenty of gleaming snow. Luckily for us Mt Baker remains calm..... for now! At Cattle Point, Pema Kitaeff gave us a short introduction to what we may find in the intertidal zone. She explained that when it comes to “starfish” scientists prefer the name “sea star” because starfish are not really fish. Scientists are so literal! And, I was not the only one surprised to learn that octopus are mollusks and barnacles, like crabs, are arthropods.

Day Four

For the 4th week of Marine Naturalist Training, Cindy went over the differences between toothed whales, like Orcas, and baleen whales, like Stinky Bill the Museum's resident Gray Whale. Nope, we don't keep Stinky Bill in a big tub upstairs in the Museum. Unfortunately, Stinky Bill met with an untimely death in his youth. What we have are his bones, which were spread out on the floor for us to put together. After a lunch break, we met with Kari Koski who told us about Soundwatch, the Museum program that actively protects whales and other Marine life by educating boaters. Mary Knackstedt gave an overview of the San Juan Marine Resources Committee and Marine protected Areas in San Juan County. Then a bird who had mystically transformed himself into a man named David Drummond flew into the room. He flitted about feeding our astonished little beaks bits of philosophical wisdom. He talked about how adaptable we are and recommended that we go outside and just be. I took this to heart as I spend altogether too much time indoors at my computer and the adaptations that result may in fact not be how I truly wish to evolve. He recommended books including: Sacred Balance by David Suzuki, Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder, and The Future of Life by E.O. Wilson.

Day Five

Today we completed our last Marine Naturalist Training day for the program. Amy Traxler started the day off with an overview on Pinnipeds and how to tell the difference between sea lions and seals. I’m usually doing pretty good if I can tell a sea lion or a seal from a hunk of wood, but I managed to identify my friend at South Beach as a California Sea Lion from the color and head shape something like a very big Chocolate Lab. Russel Barsh talked about pre-European agriculture in the Islands including Camas growing and processing and the development of reef net fishing. He touched on a favorite subject of mine, the Salish Woolly dogs. Last I knew they were thought to be extinct. According to genetic testing on Salish wool it turns out the Salish Woolly dogs are direct descendants of Tibetan Terriers and genetic cousins to Japanese Shiba Inu dogs and Alaskan Eskimo dogs. After lunch we trekked out to the lighthouse at Lime Kiln Park where Val Viers played us samples of Orca Acoustics and Jeanne Hyde talked about Southern Resident Orca family groups. In the lighthouse we could hear the sounds of boat traffic through underwater microphones. It was like hearing a chainsaw every time a boat went by. At least with our opposable thumbs and a volume knob we could turn it down. Jeanne showed us family photos of our local Orca pods. We hope we might see them tomorrow when we go out on the boat to celebrate the completion of this Spring's Marine Naturalist Training for 2008.

Closing Day

The Marine Naturalist Training Program took its celebratory cruise on the Western Prince this morning. It was glorious on the water as we cruised North out of Friday Harbor passed Spieden and Stuart Islands. We saw Harbor and Dalls Porpoise, Harbor Seals, a Stellar Sea Lion, Bald Eagles and Purple Starfish. No whales were spotted, they have not been around lately, still I know I hardly minded. It was enough to be out on the water. After the cruise we met at The Whale Museum for our graduation ceremony and I only regret that I neglected to get a photo of another one of Jenny's fabulous cakes. This one had blue frosting with the Orca Ruffles, aka J1, spyhopping out of it. Congratulations, everybody!