Whale Watching Report

The youngest member of the Transient orca pod we saw this morning.

Just West of Rosario Strait, The Island Explorer 3 is on-scene with J-Pod! Stay tuned to the Whale Report for an update from Naturalist Bart Rulon and click here to see the location of the Orca Whales from space! We Didn't have to go far to find whales today. Within 30 minutes of leaving the dock we found J-pod orcas swimming in a tight resting group on the east side of James and Decatur Islands. Faith, L57, was also swimming with J-pod. They swam very close to the shore at James Island and to our surprise a bald eagle swooped down amongst the orcas as if to grab one of them!!! Perhaps the orcas must have spooked up a salmon too close to the surface. The eagle extended his talons as if to make the grab but pulled away just a few feet from the water's surface as the orcas were coming up. Soon J-pod started to spread out and several orcas started spyhopping over the span of 15 minutes. It looked like they were waking up. Next, we pulled away from the orcas for a while to look at some other wildlife. We checked out a pelagic cormorant nesting colony on Lopez Island and looked at a bald eagle near his nest on Decatur Island. We joined back up with J-pod at the south end of Lopez Island, and they were getting more and more lively. We saw several big spyhops, some orcas started porpoising, and at the end of our visit four different orcas breached several times in a row. On our way back we stopped at Swirl Rocks to look at several harbor seals hauled out on the rocks, and a pair of bald eagles were perched side by side on the top of the island. What an incredible day we had!!!!
Naturalist Bart Rulon

9:30am
We started out our trip with lots of wildlife within the first 5 minutes. We had a bald eagle, a harbor seal mom with pup, pelagic cormorants, pigeon guillemots, and a belted kingfisher flew right in front of our bow. We got early word that orcas were spotted on the west side of San Juan Island. We headed in that direction and there was a fog bank we had to go through at the south end of Lopez Island. We did slow down to take a look at lots and lots of harbor seals hauled out on the rocks just off Colville Island. There were some seal pups mixed in with this group. We also spotted a pair of adult bald eagles perched on Colville Island. Soon their fledgling came flying in from above. He or she flew right in and started begging one of the adults for food. Before long that adult had enough of the begging and took flight just as we were pulling away. Luckily we broke out of the fog at the south end of San Juan Island near Salmon Bank, just as we found some J-pod orcas. They looked like they were chasing salmon around with lots of changes of direction. The first orca we watched fishing was Blackberry, J27. Then Oreo, J22, Cookie, J38, and DoubleStuf J34 entertained us as they swam in circles. At times it looked like they might be chasing salmon and at times it looked like they were just playing around. One of the three even spyhopped for us. The orcas swam north along the shore as we parallel viewed them along the way. We spent a lot of time watching Blackberry, and his sister, Tsuchi, J31 swimming along. Blackberry did one big breach at close range!! One young orca held his or her tail flukes up in the air as if to wave to us. That was a great way to say goodbye to J-pod this morning. Naturalist Bart Rulon

3:30pm
Just as we left the dock this afternoon we started out with an adult bald eagle perched high up on a rocky cliff on Fidalgo Island. Our orcas hadn't moved very far from their spot this morning so we took the same route around the south end of Lopez Island. The tide was coming up and we saw many harbor seals swimming around in the water. We finally found the orcas just north of Lime Kiln Park. L-pod orcas had come in from the west and joined up with J-pod. They were obviously happy to see each other because the orcas were very active. We got to see lots of breaches, spyhops, cartwheels, tail slaps, tail lobs, and just a whole lot of rolling around at the surface!! This was the most active I've seen the orcas so far this week. We saw too many J & L pod members to mention them all, but they included the adult males Faith, L57, and Ruffles, J1. We decided to take a return route through the inner San Juan Islands which were absolutely beautiful as the sun went down. We even managed to see more bald eagles as we cruised through the islands. The water was like a lake out there today to help make this whole day fantastic for watching wildlife. Naturalist Bart Rulon