Piper | Sunday, May 26, 2019 | M/V Kestrel | 11:00 AM & 3:00 PM
What a difference a day can make when it comes to weather in the Salish Sea! Today it was sunny as can be and I was out on the M/V Kestrel with Captain Gabe and two great groups of guests! On both tours we headed north out of Friday Harbor and up into Boundary Pass! We spied some harbor seals and harbor porpoises along the way, but once in Canadian waters we came across a humpback whale! We were able to identify this whale based on the coloration and scratches on its fluke, we were looking at BCZ0180, better known as Monarch! We got to see Monarch fluke many times, swimming in the deep waters of Boundary Pass and the Strait of Georgia before carrying on to meet up with a group of Bigg’s killer whales!
This group of orcas was the T101s, which are easily identifiable by their group composition, it’s the matriarch, T101, and her three grown boys, T101A, T101B, and T102, her “adopted” son. We got to see these big fellas and their mom swimming north through the Strait of Georgia, most of the time the mom and one of her sons were swimming farther away from the other two boys, but these whales were still in communication, as when they do vocalize, they can hear each other up to 10 miles away, and we were able to see both parts of the group from our vessel. After a while watching these well-finned orcas, we headed back towards Friday Harbor! Two awesome trips in one day!!