It was whales again today, but this time it was two humpbacks along the west side of San Juan Island.  That makes three different whale species in two days spotted here in the San Juan Islands!  Wow, what a cool place.  It is exceptionally cool when you think about the fact that humpbacks are rare here around the islands.  Normally, if they come into the Salish Sea they do not make it past Victoria Harbor.  Today was our day though and we took advantage of it.  And, as if seeing the...

#53 - Photo courtesy of Cascadia Research Collective

Today we followed whales across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.   A vague report of a whale south of San Juan Island became a gray whale known as #53 (see photo above).  On our way towards the area where he was said to be, one of our guests spotted something else in the water.  I quickly left the bridge to sit on the bow and see if I could help find anything.  Sure enough, up popped a juvenile minke whale a few hundred yards from us. ...

What do you do when there are no reports of whales?  Which way do you go so that you are in the best position in case whales are spotted?  How do you predict where whales are going to be?  The answers are - wildlife tour, any way you want and you don't.  The hardest part about being a Marine Naturalist when there are no whales, is convincing people that no one else is seeing whales either and that when it comes to our orca whales, it is impossible to predict when and where they will...

Hopefully.  Thinking positively, then the orcas are back and they look great!  We spent the trip yesterday afternoon with numerous members of L pod over in the Canadian Gulf Islands.  The first reports came in early in the morning with the orcas being well outside of our northern range.  They covered an incredible amount of water in a short time though and when we left the dock they were slaloming through Active Pass between Galiano and Mayne islands.  Capt. Mike did not waste any...

There is more to life in the islands than orcas.  With every brochure and website showing photos of leaping black and white behemoths, it is easy to forget that there are other equally stunning species that live in this area.  It is also easy to overlook the basic beauty of the setting for fear that you might miss that one great shot of a killer whale.  For these reasons it is always rather nice that the season starts and ends so "slowly".  These days spent rocking in the cradle of...

Today was a day you could not beat here in the San Juan Islands.  The sky was clear, the weather warm (for the Pacific Northwest) and the water was calm.  No one could seem to find orcas (remember, the world's largest dolphin) or whales today, but we had a lovely cruise around the San Juan and the Canadian Gulf Islands.  There were harbor seals, Steller's sea lions and harbor porpoises stretched to the horizon.  At boiling reef, which was rather odoriferous today, there were dozens...

All good things must come to an end and this is just about it. Today was our last weekday trip of the season. As of tomorrow, we will only be going out on Saturdays through the month of October and then we will be done for good. Do not despair though, the orcas will be back next season and so will we. In the meantime, here is the address of a blog that is both educational and entertaining and will satisfy your daily hunger for blog sustenance.

http://bitterendblog.com/

It is not...

It was a long trip today, but well worth it. A small group of guests joined us on the M/V Sea Lion and enjoyed a tour of Orcas Island and the State Marine Parks to the north as we motored to Birch Bay near Blaine, Washington. That is the farthest northeast that either Jaclyn or I have been and it is always fun to find some new water.

Of course, it is all home to our resident orcas and they were cruising through life today near the Canadian border. The groups were small and spread out...

Once again we turned our bow towards Victoria and Canada today. The orcas, J pod to be exact, were at the Victoria Harbor heading east in a resting pattern. Capt. Craig tried to give them some time to swim to us by stopping to view other wildlife, but the orcas were swimming too slowly and we needed to be making better time. So he jumped on the throttle and away we flew along the south end of San Juan Island and across Haro Strait. There were a few minutes of indecision when an...

It would be easier for me to list the animals that we did not see today, rather than to list the ones that we did. I think that the only sightings that we did not log were of the Titanic and the Loch Ness Monster. Jaclyn and I could hardly contain our excitement, which is to say that we completely abandoned all trappings of professionalism to run around the boat screaming, every time we saw something new. Capt. Craig insured that we saw all that we could today by monitoring the...