What a great day we had on the water today! It was absolutely beautiful out on the water when we left the dock today! As we were heading out of Friday Harbor we knew of reports up north off Saturna Island. Captain Brian, myself and Piper all were excited because any day that we are able to start a trip off with a sighting report is a good day!
As we were heading out we knew it would be a longer haul to make it up into Saturna Island, but we wanted to make sure that we allowed our guests to see Harbor Seals while we were out today! No one can ever say no to seeing those adorable rock sausages!
On the way up San Juan Channel we stopped and checked out some of those rock sausages. They were hauled out on the rocks and having quite the fun time sunning themselves on the rocks. After spending a few minutes with these adorable rock sausages we continued heading up towards the location of those reported orca sightings.
After trekking a little further we started to see beautiful dorsal fins in the distance. We slowed down and approached these beautiful animals slowly, reading their behaviors in an attempt to get our guests the best views while also maintaining a respectful distance.
We got some incredible looks at these animals, both the mother and her younger two calves (T49A, T49A3 & T49A4) as they surfaced off our starboard. As we continued parallel viewing these animals we then got some incredible looks at her son- T49A1 on our port side. He was having fun popping up, and then taking nice deep dives- keeping us on our toes!
We spent some fantastic time with these amazing animals and were lucky to spend a nice chunk of time hanging out with them! After getting to enjoy some awesome surfacings as well as see what we believe to be them successfully hunting a harbor porpoise it was time to head home.
We returned back to sunny Friday Harbor, happy from the beautiful day we had and in high spirits!
Until Next Time,
Naturalist Alexandria