Haleigh | M/V Kestrel | September 28, 2021 | 2:00 pm
For our adventure tour, we departed from Friday Harbor with an idea of where we wanted to travel. We headed northbound, first stopping to admire some Harbor Seals hauled out on the shoreline of Skipjack Island. From there, we made the announcement to our guests of some large animals traveling around way north from where we were at, also warning of the ~30 minute travel ahead of us. With an overwhelming “YES!” from our guests, we were quickly underway.
After about 15 minutes, we spotted some unexpected blows close to the shores of Saturna and Mayne Island. We had come across some sleepy Humpback Whales! We veered over to watch as they slowly surfaced and lingered. As we watched, we noticed more blows even closer to the shoreline. SomeHumpback Whales begin their fall migration by traveling through the San Juan Islands before moving west to their breeding grounds off of Maui, HI.
We stayed for a few surfacings, and then departed in search of more large animals in the area. Shortly after, we arrived to the west side of Point Roberts to a group of porpoising Bigg’s Killer Whales! These whales were moving eastbound at 8-10 knots, a very quick speed indicating they were either moving towards something or away from something. We admired their entire body and all of the external markings that help us identify individual whales. We later identified these Bigg’s Killer Whales as the following families: T100’s, T36, T36B’s and T34A1. They eventually slowed down to about half speed, trending east still. We watched for as long as we could before turning back south towards Friday Harbor. Our passengers enjoyed the bouncy seas that made our adventure tour quite an adventure!