Who says that a good playmate can’t be of a different specie? Anyone who has a dog in their life knows exactly what I’m talking about when I say this, but what about other animals? Several years ago I was lucky enough to spend six months living on Maui researching humpback whales. One of the most enthralling and interesting things I observed was watching bottlenose dolphins play with the humpbacks. The dolphins would excitedly swim right in front of the humpbacks and then suddenly, the whales would lift the dolphins out of the water on their giant heads and the dolphins would then go sliding down the whale’s back. It was hysterical to watch and it just seemed like the dolphins and the whales were having such a good time together. After a “sliding” incident, the dolphin would frantically swim back to the front of the whale’s head and would become very surface active almost as if to say, “Do it again! Do it again!”
Last night we witnessed an interesting inter species hang-out session. We found the K12’s - K12 “Sequim”, K22 “Sekiu”, K37 “Rainshadow”, K33 “Tika”, and little bitty K43 hanging out with a minke whale! Or maybe the minke whale was hanging out with them. It was hard to say, but it was certainly a lot of fun to watch. There was lots of surface activity - breaching, spyhopping, tail-lobbing, and even a seasnake! The orcas continued to mill around in one area and the minke was among them. Usually when we see minke whales, it’s a very nice treat, but they don’t come to the surface very often and are therefore harder to track than the orcas. This was not the case last night! The minke was surfacing very often and was right in the thick of the playing orcas a lot of the time. How I wish I could have seen what was going on under the surface! At one point, in true minke fashion, the whale surfaced right near the boat! Minke whales are known to be quite curious. Perhaps he was curious about the orcas and also about the very excited onlookers on the boat. Whatever the case, it was a beautiful evening and so special to see an incredible inter species interaction. Here are some images from our voyages yesterday:

K40 “Raggedy” shows off her nicks:

Helloooo minke whale!:

~Katie