The herring spawn

We have been going whale-watching quite a bit lately! The herring have spawned, and the ocean has been milky, opaque and slightly off-color, with lots of 'foam' on the shore. Seagulls are riding the waves, dipping their beaks in to eat them up. Whales have been swimming by on their sides, just eating the eggs. Sea lions are seen in packs, en massing and eating. How cool! The zoom on our camera is broken, so we don't have any decent pics, but the dots in one pic are of sea lions. It is amazing how close the whales sometimes get to the shore; two times we have seen a whale about 50 ft. in front of a house right on the water; what a view that would be! Since the coastline is valuable real estate, there are only a handful of places to pull over and view the ocean from. We saw one whale splashing the fluke up and down many times, which was cool.
The herring fishery has recently closed; they open it for an hour or several at a time, and staggered them over a week. It's funny how herring are the harbinger of spring here; in the last couple days I've seen several people walking around in shorts and flip-flops, even though it's still in the forties, we woke up to new snow, and it's alternatively snowing, hailing, raining, and sunny. Well, I guess that is spring!