Yesterday we headed up North towards a report of K pod in Canadian waters. It was a beautiful sunny day and on our transit to the whale reports we saw many harbor seals and harbor porpoise. We made it up to Point Roberts and met up with the K12's and the K13's. The K13's consist of seven individual whales and the K12's consist of 5 whales, including a sprouter named Tika. You can tell the sex of the whale based on the dorsal fin size but up until sexual maturity all of the whales have small fins and look like females. Once they hit sexual maturity, usually between the ages of 10 and 12, the males will then begin to grow their big 6 foot tall dorsal fin. Usually by the time the males are 17 they will have their full sized dorsal fin. Tika was born in 2001 so he is still working on his full sized dorsal fin. The whales were grouped up in their families surfacing together and displaying a variety of social communication behaviors including tail slapping and pectoral slapping. After watching the whales we headed back towards Friday Harbor with a beautiful whale watch checked off the list. All of the guests seemed to enjoy the transit to and from the whales allowing them to see a large portion of the beautiful San Juan Islands.
Naturalist Rachel
M/V Sea Lion, San Juan Safaris