Whale Watching Report

9:30 Trip
We headed south today to search for whales. We stopped at Colville Island along the way to look at several harbor seals hauled out on the rocks there. As we traveled across Salmon Bank a minke whale surfaced right in front of the boat!! We turned around and let the Minke whale come up a few more times. Next we found the orcas near Eagle Point heading north. It was a mixture of L-pod and J-pod. We were watching the trailers in the group. They seemed to be looking for fish at times, but playful at other times. Early on we saw some cartwheels, and taillobs. Later as they moved north we saw a couple of great breaches. That's just what I was wanting to see! Just as I was pointing out one of the big L-pod males, L74, Saanich, another orca breached right next to him! On the way back home we slowed down to take another close up look at several harbor seals hauled out on Swirl Rocks, including one seal pup. We cruised near Castle rock and saw more seals, a great blue heron, and several purple sea stars. Just around the corner we watched several pairs of marbled murrelets. A research boat was out there and they had already counted 50 murrelets at the south end of Lopez Island. Then to finish off our trip with a bang, first mate Mark, spotted yet another minke whale in Rosario Straits! I think we need to start calling him "Minke Mark"! Naturalist Bart Rulon

3:30pm trip
The orcas that we saw earlier today moved north during the afternoon so we decided to start our trip traveling through the inner San Juan Islands to catch up with them. Along our way through the islands we saw a variety of wildlife including bald eagles, pigeon guillemots, rhinoceros auklets, turkey vultures, harbor seals, and harbor porpoises. As we slowed down to go through Pole Pass two black oystercatchers posed for us on the rocks at close range. We were getting close to the orcas by the time we reached Pender Island and we found a pod of Dall's Porpoise swimming quickly along. We found orcas just south of the entrance of Active Pass. It was a mixture of J pod and L pod orcas again. Early on DoubleStuf, J34, came in for a close up look. We also saw Polaris, J28, looking like she was chasing a salmon, Racer, L72, Fluke, L105, and Blackberry, J27, among others. We did see a couple of breaches in the early part of our trip! The orcas seemed to pick up speed as they approached Active Pass and they gradually moved in toward shore. By the time they reached the point most of them were porpoising right next to shore. We watched as they passed by and swam against the tide through Active Pass and we saw a couple of breaches off in the distance as we pulled away! On our way back to the dock the sunset was absolutely beautiful. There were just enough clouds to make the sky especially interesting. Naturalist Bart Rulon