Whale Watching Report

What a day we had today. It was cold and rainy on and off today, and we had to go a long way to find the whales today, but it was all worth it. We headed north today in search of J-pod. Along the way we saw a couple of bald eagles, and we slowed down a bit to look at a few seals hauled out on Peapod Rocks. We were searching very hard for J-pod especially as we got north of the San Juan Islands. Yesterday we saw one brown pelican, and today we saw a flock of 7 pelicans. Finally J-pod appeared just south of Point Roberts, and they we breaching all over the place! J-pod did non-stop breaching the entire time we spent with them! I've been a naturalist for 8 years out here and I was shaking, it was so exciting. We probably saw 70 breaches today! It looked like every member of J-pod must have breached at one time or another, from the little ones all the way up to some of the old timers, including Granny (J2) and Ruffles (J1). Ruffles breached several times and Granny did a full breach for us at close range. At the time Granny breached she was swimming with Blackberry (J27) who also decided to breach several times along with performing a number of cartwheels! It was difficult to decide which group of orcas to look at because they were all coming out of the water. We were all high fiving each other up in the wheelhouse. It was so hard to leave J-pod today I could hardly stand it. If it weren't for the windy, rainy weather I probably would have had captain Michael drop me off in one of our life rafts for the rest of the afternoon. Naturalist - Bart Rulon