10:00 am
Today’s adventure tour started out as a shockingly hot morning on land. Our guests, and myself, were eager to zip around on the water and cool off. We departed from Friday Harbor scanning the exposed shorelines due to the low tides hoping to find some Harbor Seals. We came across a reef nearby Yellow Island with some curious Harbor Seals hauled out and a Bald Eagle watching from the reef marker. We made our way around the island and across San Juan Channel where we found a family of Bigg’s Killer Whales! \
This family, identified as the T36A’s, were traveling as a group of 6 in two split groups. T36A (Flapjack) was traveling upstream with her calves T36A2 (Tierna), T36A3 (Kailas), and T36A4 (No Name, born in the last year). South of this group was T36A1 (Leland, the firstborn daughter of Flapjack) traveling with her newborn calf! As a new mother, we saw her and her newborn traveling tightly with one another. This baby, as uncoordinated as a newborn human, would surface spritely followed by a big plop down onto the water. Now 3 generations of whales, this family group will continue to travel with one another to welcome and assist the newborn calf and teach them the ways of being a killer whale in this world.
2:00 pm
These whales stuck around throughout the day, so by our 2:00pm trip we met up with the same family north of Sucia Island. At this point they were taking long dive times and exhibited porpoising behavior at the surface. They moved around the water with purpose before pushing off northbound into the Strait of Georgia. As they made their way, we saw a mini baby breach by one of the newborns along with tail slaps and belly rolls by the other members. Along our route back home, we came across a nice haul out of Harbor Seals and 2 Bald Eagles perched at White Rocks as still as statues. It was wonderful to spend the day observing the newborn baby and share the conservation story of our Bigg’s Killer Whales and the Southern Resident Killer Whales.