Piper | Saturday, July 13, 2019 | M/V Kestrel | 11:00 AM & 3:00 PM
On today’s trips aboard the M/V Kestrel Captain Gabe and I took two awesome groups of folks down southwest of San Juan Island in the Canadian waters off Victoria on Vancouver Island! Down there we got to check out two humpback whales on both trips! On our morning voyage got to see two adults swimming separately. The first was a report from another vessel and the second one was spotted by a guest with a keen eye! They both gave us some great looks at their flukes, but we weren’t quite able to identify them; though, one humpback’s dorsal fin did look an awful lot like Raptor’s (BCY0458).
On the afternoon tour we were on our way to a report when we found some humpbacks of our own! A mom and calf which I identified as Zephyr and her new babe! Zephyr (MMZ0004) is the calf of Divot (BCX1057), born in 2011, she’s eight years old and this is her first calf, making Divot, a whale we see often in the Salish Sea, a grandmother!
We got to check out a variety of other wildlife on today’s trips, too! Including bait balls filled with rhinoceros auklets and common murres, small islands dotted in harbor seals, and even some harbor porpoises swimming around San Juan Channel! An awesome day for critters in the Salish Sea!