San Juan Whale Watching

Two very interesting trips today! I let JB shoot all the photos today. So here is my report and his photos this time.

This morning we arrived with J-Pod and some of L-Pod in unusually thick fog at the bottom of Rosario Strait. That is a photo of the Adventuress appearing out of the fog like a ghost ship of a pirate tale. Soon the fog lifted and we got a full view of a group of about 15 whales passing by. Beautiful!

Then it got really interesting. I received a report from a another boat about a small Pacific White Sided Dolphin nearby. In fact it seemed to be hanging out with the Orca Whales. Maybe it thought it had found some long lost relatives. Good thing these Orcas weren’t Transients (mammal feeding). So we went looking for it and soon enough it found us instead. We watched with excitement as it darted towards our bow, just beneath the surface, and then road in our bow wake, sliding effortlessly from side to side. These guys are extremely rare and this one was definitely a juvenile, which reminded me of the juvenile Pacific White Sided that we saw last year on August 7th. Is it possible that it was the same one??? Very interesting indeed.

This afternoon, we found the same Orca Whales up north of San Juan Island. They had covered about 20 miles since the morning trip! The whales were spread out in small groups and moving north when we arrived. We spent the trip with several different family groups. In these situations I love to hang out with one group for a while and then drop back to view the next group. It worked out perfectly and allowed us to see almost all of the whales.

On the way home this afternoon we stopped at Spieden Island, where we found some beautiful Mouflan Big Horn Rams on the point and about 30 Harbor Porpoises feeding in the strong currents nearby. Awesome ending to and incredible day.