Do you ever feel like a day can't get any better? That's how I felt after we left Roche Harbor aboard the Seahawk on Thursday. It was a cool, sunny summer day and we were headed north, to Canada! While we crossed the glittering water in the afternoon sun we got to see some super views on both sides of Spieden Island and headed straight for East Point on Saturna Island. We soon started seeing some blows and tell-tale dark dorsal fins in the distance. It was a group of J and K pods of our Southern Resident Killer Whales! Day just got better. They were swimming south around East Point back towards Roche Harbor so we turned around and paralleled them. At first they were all swimming in a tight formation pretty quickly. Then though one spyhopped. This is when the stick just their head straight out of the water to get a visual sense of what's going on at the surface. Kind of like us putting on goggles and sticking our head in the ocean. Then another spyhopped and then a breach! So I have to say that the most breaches I've seen in one day is at about 5 and I don't count when I just see have the breach, I got to see the whole thing or it doesn't count. But this group of J's an K's with 2 males, 5 females, and one of the newborn members of J kept breaching. There was breaching on our left and spy hopping on our right! It looked like all the females breached and the new baby orca did as well! WOOOAHHH! is correct. I counted about 15 breaches, some surprises some one after another. This day now could truly not get any better. As we had to say au revoir to their shimmering dorsal fins while they headed west and we had to continue south back to Roche Harbor I think all of our collective awe and wonder were used up at that moment. And I'm spent!
See ya next time,
Naturalist Erick
M/V Seahawk, San Juan Outfitters