Piper | Tuesday, June 4, 2019 | M/V Sea Lion | 12:00 PM
Just as I was gathering our guests for our trip today Captain Pete was on the radio with other whale watching boats and received a report of orcas in Canadian waters! So, we got off the docks with an awesome group of people and headed north in San Juan Channel, cutting across Spieden Channel towards the Southern Gulf Islands of Gooch and Mandarte. Arriving on scene with the Bigg’s killer whales, the mammal-eating ecotype, we found a large group of seven orcas! They were traveling very quickly south along Sidney Island so we fell in line, paralleling the whales from a safe distance and watched as they surfaced in the waves.
By photo-IDing the whales we figured out we were looking at the T65Bs, the T75Bs, and the T75Cs! This group of three matriarchs and their babies have been traveling together for a while now and it’s awesome to watch these animals helping each other out while they raise some little ones. We saw the orcas swim past a few groups of harbor porpoises but they didn’t indulge, it’s possible they just ate, but either way, these porpoises lucked out!
After a while with the orcas, we peeled away and motored back through Spieden Channel where we were able to spot some harbor seals resting on Sentinel Rock and some bald eagles along the shore of Spieden Island! Arriving at the east side of Spieden Channel, we headed south down San Juan Channel and back into Friday Harbor with some awesome memories of the wildlife of the Salish Sea!