Captain Mike, Naturalists Emily and Kevin, and guests on board the Sea Lion were lucky enough to see K Pod on yesterday's Whale Watch Tour!  This is the first tour of the year where we were able to view our Southern Resident Killer Whales.  K Pod, comprised of 19 individual orcas, returned in full to the waters surrounding San Juan Island.  This pod was spread out into 3 traveling groups, all headed east from Victoria, B.C. towards the west side of San Juan Island.  K Pod is...

Another fabulous day on San Juan Island! Our Owner and Captain Brian was out on the water today and spotted transient orcas near Henry Island late this morning.  T18 was out with the T19 group hunting in Open Bay and off Battleship Island.  We often see these transient orcas in the summer months as well.  Harbor seals were the main course this morning, a favorite of transient orcas.  Brian observed lots a vocalizations after the hunt was over.  Transients are often seen "celebrating"...

J Pod made an appearance this past week traveling through Haro Strait.  With exceptionally high winds this week, the Haro has been rougher than usual, but this did not stop J Pod from trudging through.  In the summer months the Haro Strait is often very calm, as it is very protected by Vancouver Island.  During winter months, the normally placid waters around San Juan, can become windswept and whitecaped.

Of the 3 Southern Resident Pods, J Pod stays closest to home during the winter...

San Juan Island has seen just about every type of weather in the last week. Currently, it is everyone's favorite: blue skies and sunny! We are hoping this weather lasts. All of the sunshine is making it feel like summer is right around the corner. We are already gearing up for the season and taking many reservations for 2014.

While we have not seen orcas recently, there was a Grey whale that popped into Puget Sound to say "hello" earlier this week.  Grey whales are baleen whales, or...

J-Pod, and L-87, made an appearance in the San Juans this weekend. Vocalizations were heard over the hydrophone at Lime Kiln State Park Saturday night. As to their current location, some faint vocalizations were picked up on the Port Townsend hydrophone, but nobody has seen or heard from them sense. A group of possibly 30 transient orcas were spotted up in Canadian waters this weekend as well.

While the snow has turned to rain here on San Juan Island, the flakes are still coming...

Today the M/V Sea Lion left Friday Harbor with good reports of black and whites on the west side of San Juan Island. As a naturalist, I always like it when there is a high probability of seeing not only whales, but more specifically, Orcas. It was also naturalist, Andrew', last time on the water for the season. So, with hopes set high by myself and the guests on board we headed out towards Salmon Bank where the whales were reported to be foraging. Our hopes would be met throughout...

When I heard the vocalizations of orcas at the Lime Kiln hydrophone this morning, I knew it would be an entertaining day. The whale chatter seemed excited and endless!

Several hours later when we were viewing the same animals from the M/V Sea Lion, they were still partying hard. We watched a large group of Southern Resident Killer Whales begin to disperse as they entered Boundary Pass from Turn Point, heading toward the Pender Island bluffs. Soon small socializing groups of...

As the sun beat down on Captain Craig, the guests, and I we enjoyed a cool breeze as we left the harbor. With temperatures near 80 degrees today, everyone was thankful to be out on the water! We were lucky enough to have positive reports of transient orcas in Canadian waters. We arrived on scene near Gooch Island to find about 8 transient orcas milling in a kelp bed. After traveling past Mandarte Island the orcas appeared to find something to eat! While, it all happened under...

What a day, I don't even know where to begin on this blog! Today was one of those days (we seem to have those quite frequently) where you just couldn't look anywhere without seeing something cool! We had a whale "Trifecta" day where we saw a Minke Whale, Humpback Whale, and Orcas! It was incredible. We no sooner got done looking at our Humpback (which decided to surface literally three feet from our boat) and we had another whale to look at! I think our major problem today was...

With the sun on our backs, Captain Craig, Naturalist Aimee, and I headed north out of Friday Harbor. Earlier in the morning we had received word of a group of Transient Orcas in the area, and we were eager to catch up to these beautiful animals! We arrived on scene with a trailing group at the south west end of Stuart Island. The trailers consisted of four whales that were traveling north toward Turn Point. At Turn Point we were joined by another group and had at least nine Transient...