Written by Alison
on Jul 07, 2025

Wildlife Close to Home

Wildlife Close to Home

June 26, 2025 – What a day! Who cares about a bit of drizzling rain when you have a Humpback Whale named Pepper and 2 family groups of Bigg’s Killer Whales all within close range of Friday Harbor! We left the dock and headed south. We slowed down as we neared Whale Rocks in Cattle Pass to check out the Steller Sea Lions. We were also scanning for a reported Humpback that had not been seen for a while. As soon as we mentioned it the humpback surfaced a couple hundred yards away! It did several fluke up dives as it zigzagged around in the pass. Every time we tried to leave it followed us! Eventually we got the required half mile away so we could speed up. It was on to find the Orcas. Just a few miles away, off of South Beach, we encountered the first group. It was a mix of the T99’s and some of the T36’s. We heard that the rest of them were hugging the shoreline. They were cruising along slowly then all of a sudden T99C, Barakat, the 16 year old male started rolling around and showing off his huge pectoral fins. The others joined in with some tail slaps and they picked up speed and headed for the pass where the other group was way ahead of them. As they entered the pass the other group turned back to meet them in the huge flood tide surging between the islands. As they joined up there were more tail slaps and little spy hop from T99D, 10 year old Puck (ID’d by his eye patch). In all we saw the T99’s made up of ~41 year old mother, Bella and her 4 offspring, 18 year old Holly, 16 year old Barakat, 10 year old Puck and 4 year old Qwinn qwinn oo qwii la. We had 4 generations in the T36/T36B family group with T36, Flapjack, a 55 year old great grandma, her second daughter, 27 year old Tattertip, with her 16 year old daughter, Bhotia, 12 year old Greenfelder, 1 year old Auk, and Bhotia’s first little one named Maple. She was born in 2025! 11 Orcas total!

 

Photographer and Naturalist: Alison Engle – Instagram: @Alisonengleart – Website: www.alisonengle.com

Western Prince Wildlife Adventures – Instagram: @Westernprincewildlife – Facebook: Western Prince Whale Watching

Written by Alison
on Jul 07, 2025

Wildlife Close to Home

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