Captain Craig, Naturalist Andrew, and myself were all very excited to share with our guests that a group of resident orcas are back! As some of our readers know we haven't been seeing our resident orcas recently so this news definitely had all of our staff very excited!
We caught up with part of L-pod just north of False Bay on the west side of San Juan Island. The whales were close to shore when we first arrived but then a male surfaced closer to our boat. Andrew and I were able to identify this male as L-88, Wave Walker. We could identify him because of his open saddle patch on his right side. Wave Walker did show us his tail a few times with doing some tail lobes.
Seeing as this is the first report of our residents in a while, the conservation K-9 boat, Moja, was out. This boat had Tucker the black lab on it and they were following L-pod. Soundwatch was also out monitoring all of the private boats as well as the whale watch boats. Soundwatch is a program out of the whale museum and is an education system on how to view our resident orcas properly.
After watching L-pod travel back and forth, we motored back home. All of our guests were excited that they were able to view part of our resident orcas. Andrew and I still are excited they are back and can't wait for the rest of them to return!
Aimee-Naturalist, M/V Sea Lion