Whale Watching Report

We started our trip with rainy and windy weather, but our passengers were in for a great treat. We found an orca superpod practically in our backyard, and within thirty minutes from our dock. It was J, K, and L pod orcas swimming in Rosario Strait. We came across them just as they were swimming away from the shoreline of Blakely Island. As we were approaching the scene we were seeing one breach after another. That type of action didn't stop for our entire visit with the resident orcas. We saw just about every acrobatic that an orca can do today, and the rain even stopped while we watched the orcas. We saw multiple breaches, spyhops, cartwheels, tailslaps, and porpoisings. Even when the orcas were just coming up to breath they were breaking the surface much higher out of the water than normal because of the wave action. Some of the orcas we identified today included L41, Mega, L77, Matia, K21, Cappuccino, and J1 Ruffles. These orcas were doing acrobatics, both young and old, for the entire time we watched them. We broke off from the orcas for about forty minutes to cruise around Decatur Island and get out of the wind. We came out on the south end of Decatur to get one last short view of the orcas as they continued to swim southward, and into ten foot seas that were a little too much for us to follow comfortably. So we continues our journey by cruising through the protected waters inside the San Juan Islands, and enjoying the scenery, harbor seals, harbor porpoises, and bald eagles. This was about as much fun as you can have out in the rain and wind. On a day when many whale watching companies cancelled trips we had one of the best whale action shows of the year. Naturalist Bart Rulon