Yesterday we had our first evening trip for this season and it was one for the books! Earlier in the day we saw all of members of J pod, a total of 24 whales, resting together on the South West side of San Juan Island. Thankfully, the whales decided to stay in the area for our evening trip, which allowed our guests to have a relaxing and enjoyable view of these Southern resident killer whales. On our way to the whale sighting we came across some playful Dall’s porpoise. Always a fun sight here in the Salish Sea! When we got to the whales we noticed that they were very spread out and just ‘milling’ around, meaning that the whales just seem to be hanging out and going in no particular direction. We were also lucky enough to drop our hydrophone in a hear the whales vocalizing! It is always amazing to see how social these animals are. With that came a variety of social behaviors including some pectoral slaps, a spy hop, and a breaching calf as well! Those social behaviors are generally what our guests love to see and are also what you see in most of the photos of these animals. An added bonus to our evening trip was that we were the only boat out on the water, we had the whales all to ourselves. We went on to look at some additional wildlife including one of my personal favorites, the Stellar’s sea lion. As we were watching the Stellar’s I noticed a small piece of loose bull kelp in the water, so I grabbed the boat hook and snatched it up. At that point I wanted to test our guest’s bravery with their willingness to eat some of the bull kelp’s leaves. I was pleasantly surprised by everyone’s participation, even most of the little ones on our trip gave it a go! All in all we couldn’t have asked for a better beginning to our evening trips.
That great photo was taken by reservation staff Courtney