The M/V Sea Lion motored out of Friday Harbor today and headed north! With September comes the fall weather, guests on board braved the misty, chilly weather to watch some Orcas. It was certainly worth it because as soon as we got north of Stewart Island we caught up with the T-19 group of mammal hunting whales! I was particularly excited because I hadn't seen the infamous "Mr.Floppy" yet this summer. He is an 18 year old male and his dorsal fin has almost reached maturity. It looks different from every angle and is so large that it curved down to the left slightly! Super cool! These guy's were hunting, tail slapping and trying to fish harbor seals out of the kelp beds!
After spending some time with the Transient Orcas, we headed south about a mile and caught up with our Southern Resident Orcas around Turn Point (the most Northwesterly part of the continental U.S.). First to "mug" (or come extremely close to the boat) was K33, Tika (born 2001) who we have been seeing up close and personal often throughout the last couple weeks. He came super close, and people had a hard time zooming out their camera lenses to capture it in time! We also saw K25, Scooter (born 1991), who I haven't seen much of this summer and was, therefore, very happy to see him!
Along the list of whales we saw came some LPod members as well! We got a nice glimpse of L94, Calypso and her four year old calf Joy following directly behind her. I couldn't have asked for a better day! Guest were able to pick out morphological differences between the two species of whale on their own, and really got to see first hand how the two species differ. Learning from experience... that's what I like as a naturalist!
Heather, Naturalist, M/V Sea Lion
San Juan Safaris