Today was an outstanding day on the water! The weather was gorgeous and warm and the water was flat calm. Spent the afternoon trip with some transients near Battleship island and a small part of J pod the J17s hanging out near turn point on Stuart island. Had many opportunities to see the whales in all their glory, with a number of breaches and spy hops, but this was just the first trip of the day.
I don't know if it was the summer solstice or what but we had an amazing evening and sunset with the whales. We were making our way out to salmon bank area on the west side of San Juan Island and out of no where a minke whale pops up right next to the boat and does a slow dramatic dive and we all got to see the entire body. Now for those of you who have not done a lot of Minke watching this is amazing, normally you just catch a glance of their dorsal fin. This close surprise encounter happened twice on our trip. Truly amazing! We also caught up with most of L pod out there as well and got to spend some quality time with some of our favorites Nigel and Fluke.
Hope to get some more great action tomorrow.
Naturalist Chelsea
M/V sea lion