Yesterday, July 24th, we had two outstanding trips on the Western Explorer. Not only was the weather absolutely beyond stellar, but we had two amazing encounters with the orcas. On our morning trip, we cruised into Canada and Swanson Channel to catch up with J pod. When we arrived, we noticed there were two tight bunches of whales and they were resting! Resting has to be one of my favorite behaviors to witness - the orcas bunch so close together it seems like they are all touching each other and they all come up to breathe at about the same time and they all dive at about the same time. It’s really and incredible sight to see 30+ whales swimming in unison. Of course the really interesting thing about resting whales is that they can’t go completely to sleep like we can. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises (collectively known as cetaceans) are involuntary air breathers - they have to think about their breathing ALL the time. Because of this, they must stay somewhat alert when they sleep to remember to come to the surface for air. Now here is the really bizarre part: cetaceans rest one half of their brain at a time in order to stay slightly alert when they sleep! They perhaps experience more of a meditative state if you want to think of it that way. While watching J pod rest in Swanson Channel, Captain Ivan and I were thinking that many more whales were present than just J pod. We were right! Up to the surface comes L72 “Racer”, L95 “Nigel”, L105 “Fluke”, L53 “Lulu”, L5 “Tanya”, L84 “Nyssa”, and I’m pretty sure I saw L54 “Ino” swimming with all of her kids. WOW! Perhaps over 40 whales resting in a tight group and we were the ONLY whale watch boat with them. To those of you who whale watch here in the San Juans frequently, you know what a very rare treat this is. All the other whale watch boats were with other members of L pod on the west side of San Juan Island. We followed the resting whales almost to Active Pass which is at the very edge of our range. What a spectacular morning!

On our afternoon trip, we met up with a small sub-group of L pod in Boundary Pass. The water was glassy calm, Mount Baker was displaying it’s full brilliance, and what were the orcas doing? Resting! Two trips with two different groups of resting whales. That’s a first for me. I didn’t get any good identification shots of the whales, but I’m pretty sure it was L55 “Nugget” and all of her close family. I may not have taken any good ID pictures, but WOW did these whales allow for some stunning photo ops in front of Mount Baker!:

We also saw lots of other animals today including bald eagles, harbor porpoise, and harbor seals with their new pups!

~Katie