The M/V Kittiwake departed from our Friday Harbor location today with spirits set high with an awesome whale report early on. We confirmed the report later when we got on scene with our L-Pod Orcas! It was going to be a great day!

After going through the renowned Cattle Pass and a little bit of fog, the Kittiwake made her way to the Southwest side of San Juan Island off Pyle Point. It's always a great sight to see your first dorsal fin and our guests were amazed at their grace and...

Captain Craig, Naturalist Andrew, and myself were all very excited to share with our guests that a group of resident orcas are back! As some of our readers know we haven't been seeing our resident orcas recently so this news definitely had all of our staff very excited!
We caught up with part of L-pod just north of False Bay on the west side of San Juan Island. The whales were close to shore when we first arrived but then a male surfaced closer to our boat. Andrew and I were able...

Blogging is always so much easier as a naturalist when you have amazing trips. I must say, I have been extremely fortunate throughout the 2013 season in having great trips. Tonight was another one of those top five best nights. Our Southern Resident Killer Whales surprised us all, as they usually do, by swimming the (roughly) 90 mile voyage from the western side of Vancouver Is. BC into the northern waters of the Puget Sound. It's not uncommon for Killer Whales to swim 100+ miles a...

Today was a beautiful day to be on the water with plenty of action, and Caitlin, Captain Mike and I were out to experience it all! We left the dock and headed out to the south end of San Juan Island. As we went through Cattle Pass, there was a plethora of wildlife to be scene. A mated pair of Bald Eagles flew above the water in front of us and landed on Goose Island. Also on Goose Island were lots of hatchings! Fluff balls of down feathers and young, disoriented, hungry baby Galls...

It was a beautiful day out on the water today with clear views of Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier, the Olympics and the Cascades! Myself, Caitlin, and Captain Mike were eager to see some wildlife and so were the guests. Heading southward, we got an awesome viewing of several hauled out Harbor Seals on Turn Rock! We made our way around the south end of the island past scenic Cattle Point continued northward along the west side. Here, we were lucky enough to spot 3 members of L-Pod!! It was...

The great weather continued today as Captain Jim, passengers, and I sped up along the west side of San Juan Island to meet up with a few L Pod members. As you might have read in earlier posts, L-22, Spirit, and her two sons, L-79, Skana, and Solstice, L-89, have been consistently found milling along the west side of San Juan this summer. Today was no exception!  They seemed to be the only show in town, since all the boats were out and about, including the University of Washington...

Heading north out of Friday Harbor, Captain Craig, Andrew, our eager guests, and I crossed the Canadian boundary line in search of the elusive K Pod. Up until two days ago, K Pod had yet to show their beautiful black and white faces in our region. Once across the boundary line, we met up with a few K Pod members interspersed with J Pod members. It was great to see K Pod out and about!

After we left the group of  J and K Pod, we decided to try our luck a little bit south where we...

Today, Captain Mike, a few quests, and myself headed up northeast towards Lummi Island where we intercepted J Pod steadily moving east. Like Andrew mentioned in yesterdays blog, the community has been anxiously awaiting the return of our residents pods and were overjoyed to hear of a superpod traversing through our area. The resident pods seemed to have split up by the time our afternoon and sunset trip rolled around.

However, that didn't stop us from seeing whales today! Earlier in...

What an amazing trip we had today! The wind was minimal, the water was like glass, and the guests were fabulous. The wildlife was simply “steller” as well. In fact, we actually saw a male and female Steller Sea Lion on Whale Rocks at the south end of San Juan Island right off of Cattle Pass! Steller Sea Lions aren’t seen as frequently as our Harbor Seals and can weigh up to two ton! Aimee and I were quite pleased with the sighting.

After watching the Sea Lion, Captain Mike wanted to...

Happy Forth of July everyone! It has been a fantastic day so far! We left our Friday Harbor location and headed out to the west side of the island near False Bay where we met some of our L-Pod members. Spirit, Skanna, and Solstice were there feeding on the Chinook Salmon that are slowly retuning back to the Salish Sea. Our Southern Resident Orcas will stay with their mother and family group their whole life; this means that our Orcas here have matriarchal societies. Spirit is Skanna...