It’s been a busy day so far at Roche Harbor. We had all hands on deck this morning! Basically, every single double boat we own was out on the water this morning! Dock master Chris (aka Cinder) was fluffin’ and shakin’ all morning and Taylor and Brittany are holding down the desk & reservations!
Captain Brian Goodremont and Naturalist Tiffany just got back from their morning whale watch and they saw all of JPod & KPod mingled together spread out between Pile Point and Eagle Point, which is along the west side of San Juan Island. According to Captain Brian, there was a ton of whales! Even L87, Onyx (Born in 1992), was mixed in with them. Little baby K44, who was born about a month ago, was traveling with his momma, K27 (also known as Deadhead). He was spy hopping right alongside mom. There were a lot of breaches, spy hops, and awesome surface behavior. Tiffany said our guests were wonderful, and that they had many amazing and interesting questions about our Southern Resident Community.
Our guests on our morning half-day kayak trips had an awesome time! We are coming up on the full moon, so we have a huge tide exchange. Our average in the San Juan Islands in about 7 feet, but today, we had and 8.5 ft tide exchange. This means a lot of the intertidal zone that is usually covered with water is exposed. Guide Emily saw a bunch of purple ochre sea stars, jelly fish, sea urchins, sea anemones, and even a huge gumboot chiton. The gumboot can get as long as 14 inches. Don’t know what a gumboot chiton is? Think gigantic potato bug :).
The Sea Hawk is back on the water for the afternoon trip and they are with the whales again! Guides Michael & Jesse are out on the water with their half-day day kayak trip guests. Check our Facebook page for updates later (psssst, click on the Facebook icon at the bottom of the page. It’ll take you right to it!) Also, whale watching guest Nicole posted a SWEET photo (that she took!) of a big male and female killer whale on our Facebook page. Nicole was on the Sea Hawk a few days ago when we had a superpod!