San Juan Island Adventures

Captain Pete and Naturalist Chelsea left Roche harbor in a hurry to head to salmon bank with reports of whales and boom we ended up finding whales around Kellet bluff and boy they were on a mission. Traveling at a consistent pace of 6+ mph, J and L pod were headed north fast. We were able to follow them to Stuart Island which was about an hour and a half. By the end of our tour we were getting reports that the whales were nearly to active pass! They were definitely ready...

Sunday was a beautiful day on the water as it has been all weekend. Glorious whale activity right out of Mosquito Pass and down the west side on San Juan Island. L pod was traveling very close together and we were able to spot some spy hops and breaches as well. Today really felt like summer, the sun was out the water was calm and the crew and guests were happy. We also had some other wildlife spotted, bald eagles, harbor seals, and even some harbors porpoise.

Enjoyable...

Today M/V Sea Hawk had two trips and were lucky enough to see residents and transient orcas! On our 11AM departure, Captain Nancy took our guests and myself along the westside of the island where we ran into our resident orcas just before Lime Kiln State Park. There were two separate groups of orcas that were moving slowly and appeared to be resting.

When orcas rest, they actually shut off half of their brain.  Since orcas need to come to the surface to breath, they need...

M/V Sea Hawk headed south today on their 11AM trip in hopes to catch up to J-pod. Once out of the harbor, Captain Jim started hearing reports of a group of whales coming in from the west and a group heading west. We then started to hear that the group coming in from the west was L-pod! This is the first time for all of L-pod to come into the San Juans this season and when this occurs, a greeting ceremony occurs!

I, personally, have never witnessed a greeting ceremony and...

Today, captain Chris and myself, took our guests all the way up to Active Pass in the Canadian Gulf Islands. We had reports of J-pod heading north before we even left the dock, so our goal was to catch up to them. Guests were excited and willing to go so far to see the resident orcas! I was able to inform guests how quickly and how far the orcas could travel in one day.

Resident orcas are known to travel over 100 miles per day and can reach speeds up to 30mph! By the time...

We left Roche Harbor out of Mosquito pass and came out into Haro Strait and were greeted by the matriarch of J-pod J-2, better known as Granny! Granny was leading J-pod south down through Haro Strait headed towards to Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Granny was with her usual family subgroup consisting of J-37 (Hy'Shqa), J-40 (Suttles), J-45 (Se-Yi'-Chn), and J-49 (T'ilem I'nges).  It is very common to see the whales travel in their smaller family subgroups.  We then let Granny's...

M/V Sea Hawk departed Roche Harbor at 11:00am and headed toward Discovery Island in hopes to see J-pod. About half way down Haro Strait, Captain Chris heard a report of transient orcas off of Sidney Island. Guests were excited to hear about this report in hopes to see the transients hunting. Transient orcas hunt marine mammals, like Harbor Seals, Harbor Porpoises, Stellar Sea Lions, and even other whales.

By the time we caught up to these transient orcas, they were moving...

Today start of grey and foggy on the island, but hopes were high when we heard of whales on the westside.  Captain Chris and I couldn't wait to get our guests down to the whales so we headed straight to Lime Kiln Lighthouse. The lighthouse has been the place to be the last three days, seeing as that is where J-pod has been hanging out. Once we got on scene we found out that there was J-pod and part of L-pod here, specifically the L-

The whales were very spread out and...

Captain Nancy and myself were excited to have our guests aboard M/V Sea Hawk on this bright sunny day, mainly because J-Pod came in over night!  It is always exciting when we have our residents return in May because it feels like summer is in full swing! After informing our guests with our plan we headed South towards Lime Kiln Lighthouse. This is were we first encountered the "Cookie Clan".We were fortunate enough to be the only boat with them!

This clan is made up of...

What an amazing trip we had today! We left our dock today in Friday Harbor without any whale reports once again, so Captain Mike and I decided we were going to head north to see what we could find in that region. We were looking for transient killer whales; this kind of killer whale hunts marine mammals. There is ample food for them north of San Juan Island including harbor seals, harbor porpoise, Steller Sea Lions (the largest in the world), and even Dall's...