Olivia Esqueda | April 14th, 2025 | M/V Osprey | 2:00pm

We love sunny days with calm seas and whales nearby- which is exactly what this afternoon brought! We started off our trip heading north through San Juan Channel until we came upon Spieden Island. This privately owned island has the largest bloom of pink flowers (invasive and a part of the geranium family) that we have seen in years and, contrasted with the green shoreline and the mouflon sheep lambs prancing around, it engulfs the...

Lauren | M/V Osprey | Wednesday, April 9th | 2:00 pm

Today was our first tour aboard the M/V Osprey, our largest vessel in the fleet. A fully booked tour on our largest vessel can mean only one thing… Summer is coming! We boarded our eager passengers and headed out of Friday Harbor. We had a report of an animal south of Lopez Island, but with the report being pretty far away, we had no time for prior stops. We cruised south in San Juan Channel and through Cattle Pass, taking looks at the Olympic...

Lauren | M/V Sea Lion | Monday, April 7th | 12:30 pm

Our Classic Whale Watch & Wildlife tour left the dock and headed north in San Juan Channel. Rain was in the forecast, so we prepared for a wet ride, but thus far the skies above looked clear. Our first stop was to the Cactus Islands to view some hauled-out harbor seals. We love seeing harbor seals out here. Their thriving population is a product of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. Before 1972, many pinnipeds were killed for their pelts...

Lauren | M/V Sea Lion | April, 5 2025 | 12:30 pm

The spring equinox is always welcomed here in the Pacific Northwest. The long winter nights spent dreaming of daylight, warmer days and clearer skies are suddenly behind us. This year, the equinox brought us something even dreamier than a season change, it brought us a baby whale. On March 20th, 2025 the T046B’s were seen travelling in eastern Juan de Fuca Strait with a new calf in tow. In every encounter, the calf was seen surfacing in the...

Lauren | M/V Sea Lion | March 29, 2025 | 12:30 pm

Our Saturday, March 29th Classic Whale Watch and Wildlife tour was a success before even leaving the dock. That’s because 10 minutes before our tour departed, killer whales were found right outside of Friday Harbor! We left the dock and alerted our guests that luck was on their side and instructed them to look for dorsal fins in the distance. Sure enough, not even 15 minutes into our trip we were on scene with 7 Bigg’s Killer Whales. The whales we...

Olivia Esqueda | March 22nd, 2025 | M/V Sea Lion | 2:30pm Charter

This afternoon was such a special treat out on the water with the Orca Behavior Institute’s Biggs 201 Class. Lucky for us, we were able to leave the dock about 10 minutes early, which worked in our favor since we had a whale report flirting with the line of the range our vessel could travel in the allotted timeframe to get folks back for the 6:25pm ferry!

We immediately started traveling south through San Juan Channel keeping San...

Lauren | M/V Sea Lion | September 12th, 2024 | 12:30pm

Our Thursday afternoon tour aboard the M/V Sea Lion started how we wish every tour would begin. Not only did we have reports of killer whales, but we had reports of multiple killer whale social gatherings. Not one, but two T-Partys had been found in Rosario Strait. A “T-Party” refers to a large group of Bigg’s AKA Transient (hence the “T”) killer whales. For a gathering to be a true T-Party, there must be members from at least three different...

Maxx | M/V Kestrel | September 11th 2024 | 2:00pm

Killer whales in this region are not tagged and haven’t been since 2013 (except for the occasional use of non-piercing suction cup tagging devices that are deployed every now and again). The devices that are used are almost exclusively used for data collection: determining where whales travel, what depths they’re diving to, what depth within in the water collum they’re typically feeding, and so on. Therefore, we don’t use tagging data to find...

Maxx | M/V Kestrel | August 31st 2024 | 2:00pm

Kestrel’s second tour of the day was incredible. The family of three Bigg’s Killer whales, the T018s, continued thy journey around Lopez and had now made their way up to Orcas islands eastern coastline. We found them by the Peapod islands and were almost immediately greeted with a spy hop (when a whale propels its face vertically out of the water) as birds buzzed around them. I only assume that this family was once again, feeding.

The T018s are...

Maxx | M/V Kestrel | August 31st 2024 | 10:00am

A loose rumor of whales ignited our tour today- s share based report as we left the harbor claimed a small family had been spotted over Salmon bank, south of San Juan Island. We have a heading. 

Kestrel flew south through the San Juan Channel, stopping only briefly at Goose Island to admire a small haul out of Harbor seals and of course all the incredible pelagic birds that call this tiny island home. Double Crested cormorants sunned themselves atop...