Departing Roche Harbor Captain Mike, the guests, and I headed towards Spieden Island.  As is common for this time of year, we did not have any whale reports when leaving the dock, but this did not dampen our spirits!  After enjoying the green hill side and many hoofed animals, we received a call on the radio that a humpback had been spotted!

Big Mama, a local female humpback was swimming in Haro Strait headed north.  We were able to watch and enjoy her surfacing slowly and many tail...

July 6th was an epic day here in the San Juan Islands! The afternoon trip was glorious as we headed to the reports of the southern residents and we spotted a humpback whale! We got a few awesome looks and got to see some sweet fluke up dives. We caught up with Jpod near Stuart Island. We got to see J2 Granny our 103 year old whale and L 87 Onyx who spends most of his time with Jpod. This was a great start to the day!

The evening trip was rocking too! We headed west this time and ran...

Today we arrived at the M/V Sea Lion with a report of Resident orcas traveling quickly to the southwest. Naturalist Aimee, Captain Pete and I consulted and decided that we would try to catch up with them! Orcas can swim over 100 miles in a single day and can reach speeds in excess of 35 miles per hour. We had a great group on board today who were very excited to be out on the water. We all were hoping that the orcas stayed close enough so that we could catch up with them!

On the way...

The crew and passengers aboard our original San Juan Safaris vessel, the M/V Kittiwake, braved the dense fog bank that awaited us at Cattle Pass in search of earlier reports of humpback whales. At certain points during the trip visibility was as low as 150 yds! Not to worry though, because Captain Jim wasn't going to let that get in the way of seeing humpbacks!

As we motored South, passengers were constantly on the look out for our baleen friends who have traveled great distances to...