Maxx | M/V Sea Lion | September 7th 2024 | 12:30pm
Serendipitous moments like we saw on today’s tour are always a bit confounding to me as I cruise around the San Juans. Yesterday a big group of Bigg’s Killer Whales passed through the San Juan Channel, down around Jones Island and into Orca’s Islands Deer Harbor. They milled there and carried on again, up around Orcas Island and through Presidents Pass.
Today’s tour was remarkably similar- It didn’t take long for Sea Lion to leave Friday Harbor and make it up to Deer Harbor where a trio of young male Bigg’s Killer Whales foraged off Deer Harbor’s Fawn Island. This alone was wild to me as Bigg’s Orcas have a pretty massive territorial range, from SE Alaska straight down to Northern California and seeing them in milling through our the small island harbors is a bit of an unusual treat. The Salish Sea in its entirety is approximately 7,000 square miles and is littered with Harbor seals, a favorite food source for our marine mammal eating Bigg’s. So, to see two distinct families traveling through the same tiny harbor two days in a row throws my brain through a loop. Did yesterday’s whales give a heads up to the three transiting boys that Deer harbor is worth a visit? Was this just happenstance?
We trailed with T060D, E and T069E for a while as they broke away from the Orcas shoreline, eventually closely passing by our stern for several breaths before we departed.
From there we carried on to the north where we stopped briefly alongside a Humpback whale as it slowly traveled west through boundary pass. This was clearly a juvenile whale, quite small compared to some of the 40-ton adults we can also see transiting through here. This whale played it coy, never fluking for us so remained anonymous yet surfaced to breathe with regular consistency.
How lucky are we, two different types of whales?! Hope you all enjoyed that trip today and hope to see you all out there again soon.