It was a picture-perfect day.  Clear blue skies and sunshine, with just a ruffle of a breeze to keep you cool.  We left Friday Harbor aboard the Western Prince with a very energetic group of passengers.  We did have reports of whales in the area, but as wild whales sometimes do–they were all seemingly heading away from the island.  So we had high hopes to be able to see them before they departed.  When we approached Salmon Bank south of the island, we could  see a few boats in the distance, which was encouraging.  Soon we found our own little group of orcas to watch, and it was so thrilling to see how active the whales were.  I couldn’t ID one of the orcas that must have breached almost a dozen times in about 10 minutes as he was a bit far away.  But we had no problems making an ID of L41 Mega, L79 Skana, L88 Wavewalker.  These big boys have huge dorsal fins, which is also why we call them indicator whales (since these whales live with mom all their lives, if they are around, you know mom isn’t too far away!)  Soon our three “big boys” were joined by other members of their family, and our passengers were soon oohing and ahhhing as if it were the 4th of July as 6-8 whales would surface simultaneously.  Our time with the whales seemed to go by so quickly, but soon it was time to leave in search of other wildlife.  We spotted two minke whales (one of which is the smallest I’ve ever seen, so perhaps it’s a new calf?), bald eagles, and harbor seals.  A wonderful sunny, summer day!