Whale Watching Report

As we left the dock, we got a great look at Washington State's Official Ship, the Lady Washington. It just arrived in Anacortes this morning. We did a nice slow down through the south end of Lopez Island and Castle Rock; we saw harbor seals hauled out on the rocks and even some purple sea stars! On Long Island, there were two bald eagles sitting side by side. Then one took flight and hit the water and came out with a fish! It was amazing! We poked our head into San Juan Channel to see if we could find anything. As we made our way out of the channel, our guests got to witness Lake Juan de Fuca. It was so flat calm, we could see for miles! There were harbor porpoise everywhere! We did a slow down at Hein Bank and we found a very cooperative minke whale! It was the most friendly minke whale I think we have encountered. He had very consistent dives and surfaced parallel to us for a long time! At one point, minke breath engulfed the boat as well. We spent a lot of time with our friendly minke, then we headed east in search of other animals. One of our customers actually found our second minke of the day and he was moving fast! He gave us some great looks and eventually slowed down. While we were watching this fast minke, another passenger found a different minke on the other side of the boat! It was minke soup. We soon departed and headed toward the harbor. As we entered Guemes Channel, we found another minke headed up Bellingham Channel! These minkes just couldn't get enough of our boat today! The minke whale actually led us up to a channel marker where we found a California sea lion hauled out! We got some fantastic looks! We continued toward home but we found another California sea lion hauled out on different channel marker so we had to give him a little time too! It truly was an amazing day with so much wildlife and flat calm waters!

The Lady Washington coming into port