[Friday, 3/2/18 - 12:00 - M/V Sea Lion - Naturalist Erick]

A Steller Start

            Here at San Juan Safaris we are having a great time since starting one-a-day tours on March 1st. This Friday, Captain Mike and I took out a small group of folks to look for wildlife on a quintessential Pacific Northwest weather day. There was no rain but all around you could see the tree tops scraping the clouds and creating the undulating mist that often surrounds the islands this time of year...

09/14/17 – M/V Sea Lion – 12 PM

M/V Sea Lion left Friday Harbor today with a group of bright-eyed guests and reports of two humpback whales just beyond San Juan Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Heading south down San Juan Channel, several shy harbor porpoises quickly surfaced just beyond our wake. These cute little cetaceans get 5 to 6 feet long and only weigh up to 200 pounds. So tiny!

As we made our way past Cattle Point, the southern-most point of San Juan Island, and into...

[08/22/17- M/V Sea Lion- Kelsey, Naturalist- 1:30PM]

Up until about 2002, there hadn’t been any humpback whales seen in the Salish Sea for over 60 years, because they were hunted until they were close to extinction. Since being put on the endangered species list, they have made quite the comeback, and now we are seeing quite a regular population (that’s on the rise!) returning to the San Juan Islands during the summer months when they are feeding. Today, we got a chance to see a...

[Naturalist Erick D., M/V Kestrel,  8/18/17, 10:00AM]

Finally Friday! On this day Captain Mike and I headed out on an wildlife adventure with just a few folks in the morning. One of the families (matrilines) of Orcas (Killer Whales) that we had been seeing the past few weeks was spotted pretty close from land. We zipped over to Harney Channel in between Orcas and Shaw Islands. There they were tranquilly swimming along the Shaw Island shoreline. This particular family of Orcas was...

[Naturalist Erick D., M/V Sea Lion, 8/17/17, 1:30PM]

The weather here in the San Juans has definitely changed for the better. A few days ago the wind shifted and blew the smoky haze away, it rained!, and the temperature cooled down again. On this beautiful, cool, and sunny day Captain Gabe, Rachel, and I all took a full boat on a search for some fun nature!

Bald Eagles

Today we took an inter-island route since there were some whale reports on the other side of the islands. We...

[8/15/17- M/V Sea Lion- Kelsey, Naturalist- 5:30PM]

Some days, whales are juuuust out of reach from us, and that is okay! We understand that the animals we are searching for are wild, and orcas can actually swim 35 mph and travel up to 100 miles in a day! We always want to see whales, but we also have a great deal of other amazing wildlife that fills these islands in the Salish Sea that we want to share with travelers. We actually have 4 species of baleen whale, 2 species of dolphin...

[8/12/17- M/V Sea Lion- Kelsey, Naturalist- 1:30PM & 5:30PM]

Some days are just so perfect it doesn’t seem real. And when not one, but TWO trips turn out to be beautifully perfect, it’s a pretty surreal day!

Both trips saw some transient killer whales (or mammal-eating orcas), but there were two separate groups on the same path of travel! In the afternoon, we went south from Friday Harbor to Cattle Point, and there by Whale Rocks were some orcas! We viewed them briefly, and then we...

[Naturalist Sarah C. 8/11/17 2pm Kestrel]

There was wildlife abound today in the Salish Sea! In a lovely continuation of a trend, we've been spotting orcas fairly consistently over the past week. Today's family was especially a sight for sore eyes - called the T65A's after their matriarch (and mother of the rest of the group), this family of five are frequent visitors to the San Juans but hadn't been spotted nearby for nearly a month... before today!

We left Friday Harbor today with...

[Sarah M. – 07/31/2017 – M/V Kittiwake – 01:00pm Private Charter]

I’ve said once and I’ll say it another billion times, I love private charters on the M/V Kittiwake! I really enjoy getting to know an intimate group of guests and I love being able to design a trip based on their priorities. Sometimes we have guests who want to see the lighthouses of the San Juans or guests who really want to go find seabirds. With a private charter we have the flexibility to go out and look for...

[7/28/17- M/V Sea Lion- Kelsey, Naturalist- 1:30PM and 5:30PM]

Sunny skies and whales in the forecast- it was turning out to be a beautiful July afternoon! Our first group departed on M/V Sea Lion from Friday Harbor on San Juan Island and headed north through San Juan Channel and President Channel. We reached Sucia Island and the top of Orcas Island, and lucky us, TWO family groups of transient, or mammal-eating, orca whales were around, just three miles apart!

We arrived on scene...