Whale Watching Report

The morning trip started of with a great blue heron as we exited the marina. Today we took a trip through the inner islands where we found harbor porpoise, bald eagles, turkey vultures and harbor seals. We crossed the Canadian border up near Saturna Island, where we saw our first looks at some J-pod orcas! The first whales we spent time with were Ruffles and Granny. As they swam south, we moved on to some other whales who were pushing offshore. Echo was swimming just ahead of her mom Slick and Echo decided to show off her jumping skills. She breached for us multiple times! Slick even gave us breach too! Then big brother Mike swam by showing us just how big he is getting. Echo and Slick started picking up their speed, so we travelled with them into US waters. We got some great looks as they swam by the boat headed toward Stuart Island. We headed back the same way and found more bald eagles, harbor porpoise and harbor seals. It was a great morning spent with the whales up in Canada.

Echo breaching

Our evening trip took us southbound in Rosario Strait, where we found lots of harbor porpoise swimming all around the boat! We did a slow down through Castle Rock and the south end of Lopez Island. A bald eagle was perched in a tree on Lopez, two marbled murrelets near Castle Rock and some harbor seals hauled out on Swirl Rocks. We continued west toward San Juan Island where we met up with members of J-pod and eventually some L-pod whales too! Our first whales (just like the morning trip) were Granny and Ruffles. Then we saw some action off in the distance so we headed that way. We came across Riptide and Spieden on our way to the action. Our guests were able to have some great viewing as they passed our boat! Next, some L-pod whales gave us a swim-by, Nugget and two of her children, Lapis and Takoda. They were rolling around and playing with each other. Off in the distance, we saw lots of whales (including Slick and her family, Ruffles, Spieden, Blackberry, Ocean Sun) swimming in circles and playing with bull kelp. We also saw a minke whale swimming with the orcas! He wanted to get in on some of the fun too! At one point the Minke surfaced really close to our boat, as if to say ‘Don’t forget about me!’ It was great to see the minke compared to the orcas! Then Solstice and Cookie came over and swam a ways off our stern and Skana and Spirit swam over to meet them. Then Ocean Sun and Mystery both breached for us in the distance! It was a great way to end our time with the orcas! We headed back and enjoyed a beautiful evening in the San Juans.

Nugget and her calf