The only Monday blues for today’s tour was the gorgeous blue sky over San Juan Island. We started off the day hearing chatter of sightings down South, so we headed out of Friday Harbor in search of whales. Before getting too far, a Steller sea lion surprised our guests by appearing close to the boat, giving us a great start to our wildlife tour. This surprise encounter was closely followed up with a harbor seal haul-out not too far away, creating a great opportunity to compare two of the majestic pinnipeds that we can see in the Salish Sea.
Shortly after passing Cattle Point, we encountered a mother humpback whale and her calf. Humpbacks give birth during their migration to warmer Hawaiian waters in November/December, making this little calf 6-7 months old and weighing 3-5 tons. They were traveling towards Haro Strait doing lots of breathing at the surface without any deep dives, although the calf did give us a lot of excitement the multiple times he did a shallow dive. When a humpback does a full dive, we often times get to see the unique markings on the underside of their tails, but this calf decided to not give us a look at its. It was reported that the mother whale was “Big Mama”, an infamous whale in these waters because she is one of the first humpbacks sighted in the Salish Sea after they were extirpated in the 1960s. This year’s calf is Big Mama’s seventh calf to be recorded here!
As we left Big Mama and her calf to continue their travels, we headed West in search of Bigg’s killer whales that were reported near Victoria, BC. When we came upon the family, we learned that the whales were a part of the T049A’s. This pod consists of 6 whales, and 5 of them were present today! We got great views of T049A “Nan”, who is the matriarch of this family, and her four kids: T049A “Noah”, T049A3 “Nat”, T049A4 “Neptune”, and T049A5 “Nebula”. They were traveling close to the shoreline and surfacing together, giving our guests a great view of a family of orcas with a beautiful Canadian backdrop.
As we made our way across the channel back to Friday Harbor, the excitement from seeing two types of whales was buzzing through the boat. I’m glad everyone enjoyed the amazing encounters as much as I did!