San Juan Whale Watching

We spent a wonderful afternoon with J-Pod today off of the south end of San Juan Island.

I new it was going to be an interesting day when we found a big Stellar Sea Lion fishing at the bottom of San Juan Channel.  Stellars normally don’t start showing up until September.

The whales were very spread out and doing a lot of foraging.  So, I found a nice little group all to ourselves and set up off to the side to observe.  It was a very playful little family group made up mostly of the J11’s.  As we continued offshore with them I started getting some reports of 2-3 different Minke Whales mixed in with the Orca Whales.  We caught a few looks here and there of the Minkes as we went by.  Then we headed over to check out J1 (Ruffles).  He is the oldest (57 years) and biggest (6ft dorsal) male in the population and always a magnificent animal to observe.  The really interesting thing though was that a small Minke Whale was traveling along side of J1 within about 200 yards.  We observed at least 6-8 surfacing with both animals almost in sync.  One thing that makes this so interesting is that Transient Orcas (mammal feeding) are known to prey on Minke Whales, yet these guys looked like best buddies.

One of the things that I love about being out on the water is that you never know what you will find.