Thanks for the postings about the ancient murrelets, they motivated me to visit the Edmonds pier today from about 1230-230. I stayed at the north end of the pier and had many good looks at ancient murrelets, rhino auklets, murres, and pigeon guillemots. Shortly after arriving I saw a feeding frenzy involving perhaps 2 dozen d-c cormorants, along with bonaparte's gulls, rhino auklets, and ancient murrelets. An enormous school of herring was visible directly under the pier and to the north, but I only saw the cormorants coming up with fish.
At one point the ancient murrelets were directly below me, and I was able to walk along and watch them for about 100 feet as they swam underwater. It seemed that when they were near the pier they were busy foraging and spent little time on the surface. Often their calls gave me an indication of their location, and then they would dive moments after I got my optics on them. They're fast! Longer observations were made when they were more distant, perhaps 100 yards.

Almost immediately north of the fishing pier is an old underwater reef made of old car tires, a reef designed to provide habitat for rockfish and other species, and attract fish for anglers. Much of the feeding activity on herring that I saw today was in the vicinity of the reef (not to be confused with the Edmonds Underwater Park, which is north of the ferry). Some very plump harbor seals were nearby as well.

Although some other people on the pier were wearing shorts, I was freezing!

Kevin Li
Ballard, USA
kdli at msn.com