Olivia Ellman | M/V Kestrel | September 1st, 2024 | 10:00 am
Today’s morning adventure whale watch started the month off with another great trip! As one of the first boats out on the water, we began our trip in full search mode with a few rumors to the north. We traveled up San Juan Channel, stopping to view a group of harbor seals hauled out on a small island and harbor porpoises swimming nearby. This is always a great sign of our productive ecosystem, and made us even more excited at the chance of seeing the marine mammal eating ecotype of killer whales (Bigg’s/Transient) in the region. We were following up on some loose reports of a group of those Bigg’s Killer Whales past Saturna Island, so we continued north into Canada. As we reached the area of the report, we slowed to look around for any signs of killer whales, particulary any blows or large black dorsals. We traveled along Saturna and Tumbo Islands with no luck, but fortunately another boat in the area found the whales and alerted us of their location back a little south of us!
We arrived on scene to a group of about eight Bigg’s Killer Whales, who were quickly identified as members of the T046 and T124 matrilines. The two large males, brothers T46D Strider and T46E Thor, stood out above the rest with their massive dorsal fins. We followed along with these families as they traveled south east and got beautiful looks at all of them, including a young calf! After a while of discussing their family histories and hunting techniques, we had to begin our journey back towards Friday Harbor. On the way back we got some surprise looks at some Stellar’s Sea Lions, making this an incredible multi marine mammal day!
Check out our SmugMug to see photos from today’s trip on M/V Osprey at https://sanjuansafaris.smugmug.com/.