It’s been a pretty great weekend so far! It appears that the weather is definitely going to cooperate with us. The rest of the weekend is supposed to be mostly sunny, in the low 70s with only a 10% chance of rain. This means lots of trips heading out on the water with tons of last minute bookings. We come to work in the morning thinking its going to be a pretty standard day, and then WHAM! Everyone wants to participate in kayak trips, rentals, paddle boards, etc., and it gets busy faaaast!
Naturalist Kevin and Captain just returned from the morning whale watch and they had a wonderful time. Kevin said that’s he’s never had a group of guests so interested in the wildlife, geology, and ecology of the San Juans. His guests wanted to know everything! They had a very unique whale watch trip today. They saw all of J pod and also the K13 subgroup resting together on the west side of San Juan Island. Resting whales shutdown one half of their brain, synchronize their breathing & diving patterns, and group together shoulder to shoulder. Guests on the Sea Hawk saw them surfacing together as one massive group of almost 40 whales. And of course, Granny (J2) was leading the group.
Katy and her guests of the 5-hour kayak trip saw a ton of harbor seals and seal pups wrapped up in the kelp near Battle Ship Island and Barren rock. Michael, who was out on a 3-hour trip earlier today, reported that this year’s bald eagle eaglets are fully fledged and testing their wings in the trees on McCracken Point. Philip is out on the water finishing up his afternoon trip. Be sure to check our Facebook page for updates from his trip!
This evening, our staff is having a mid-season staff barbeque to catch up with one another. We’ve been so busy with lots of multi-days, day trips, and behind the scenes office work that it’s been really difficult to get us all together in one place. Tonight, we are also going to do a special prize drawing for staff members who went above & beyond to and showed outstanding behavior as a SJO employee! Staff is nominated by their coworkers, which is often times the biggest compliment :). Go SJO!