O Canadaaaa, you have the resident orcas in your waters and we are coming to see them!  North out of the harbor, past Yellow Island (hello, plump harbor seals!), along Spieden Island (any Mouflon sheep?), around Flattop Island, across to Waldron Island (shy harbor porpoises) and across the Haro Strait (and the US/Canadian border) to Saturna Island.  And what did we find?  The largest of the dolphin (odontocete) species: killer whales!

Upon arriving to the scene, passengers saw three...

Another beautiful day as we motored south down the San Juan Channel toward Cattle Pass.  It was slightly overcast but we could see Mt Baker standing tall to our east.  We stopped to look at a juvenile bald eagle sitting atop a rock otherwise covered with seals and had an "awwww" moment when a tiny seal pup surfaced behind his mom, looked at us with his big, brown eyes and then did a crazy little half breach dive.

We rounded Cattle Point and cruised west, toward False Bay.  In the...

Last evening I got out from behind the computer and went out on the whale watching tour that departs at 5:30.

We went out of Friday Harbor, then south down the east side of San Juan Island.

About 1 mile off the south west side of San Juan Island  there were many, MANY whales.

It was an exceptionally active bunch of whales that we viewed for about 40 minutes. The energy! Breach after breach. Slap after slap. Even the youngsters were getting into the act.

I have a new camera. A...

Southbound from Friday Harbor, we went in search of Pacific northwest wildlife. Along the way, we saw harbor porpoises just in the San Juan Channel north of the harbor.  A few harbor seals were spotted frolicking in the waves, perhaps foraging or playing.  As we rounded Henry Island along the northern end of San Juan Island, we headed south along the Haro Strait and began to see boats in the distance spread out over several miles.  Upon closer viewing, those boats happened to have...

There's a theory among whale watch captains that whales breach more when the waves are choppier.  Last night's trip was definite proof for that theory!

We left the harbor southbound, searching for our earlier super pod.  As we peeked out of the safety of the islands at Cattle Pass, the wind was blowing down from the Olympic Mountains, creating a fierce chop in the water.  As we traveled northwest, sea spray was blowing over the bow and the port side of the boat; everyone took shelter...

Traveling east between Orcas and Shaw Islands and then south along Lopez, we emerged in the Rosario straight.  Despite starting in beautiful and warm Friday Harbor sunshine, we quickly became encompassed in a cool low-lying fog bank (but still at least giving us 225 yards of visibility).  Looming off our starboard side was another whale watching vessel, stopped, watching, waiting.  With a quick radio call to them, we learned that they were waiting for whales off of their port side...

Our adventures today started off a little cool, cloudy and choppy as we traveled south towards Cattle Pass.  Along the way, we stopped for some harbor seals hauled out attempting to bask but then found others at the Pass being more efficient with their time (there was no sun for basking) hunting for food.

Around the bend, headed northwest into the Haro Straight, we began seeing intermittent identifiable black dorsal fins: looks like J-pod was in the neighborhood.  The pod was spread...

Today was a day of border crossing, and re-crossing, and crossing again.  In search of orcas rumored to be nearly out of reach, we headed north out of the harbor, eventually crossing the border into Canada at Boundary Pass.  Up around Saturna Island, we went into the Strait of Georgia where we finally found whales.  We spent much of our time going back and forth across the border as we observed J-pod and L87, a large male named "Onyx" with a solid white saddle patch on his right side...

It started raining at exactly 1:00.  We slogged out of the harbor under a giant black cloud that seemed to cover only San Juan Island.  The farther away we got, the more sun we saw.  Finally, headed southeast over the top of Lopez Island and down the east side, we moved out from under the cloud and into the sunshine.  Guess who was waiting for us in the sunshine?  Orcas.  Resident orcas.  Lots of them.  We found them in Rosario Straight.  They were spread from the near side of the...

On this beautiful, sunny Thursday afternoon we headed south out of Friday Harbor with news that the killers were hanging around the west side of San Juan Island. The passengers spirits were high as we headed out with the prospect of seeing all sorts of wildlife. As we made our journey west we stopped to watch some harbor seals hauled out on rocky areas soaking up some sun. Just before we reached Lime Kiln we saw what we were looking for, the killer whales were up ahead. It was J pod...