7/7/17 - Kestrel 2:00 PM Departure
Today we left Friday Harbor at 2pm and couldn’t ask for better reports to start our trip with. We headed just a bit North inside San Juan channel and came across ‘Divot’, a humpback whale commonly seen in this area. We watched as he surfaced regularly and displayed consistent dive times. He also had exceptionally good fluke out dives, with the underside of the tail fully visible.
We then made our way to the North side of Shaw Island and hung out with the T49A’s for a bit. This is one family of transient whales that have been very regular to the area this summer, most likely feeding on the large number of harbor seals we have here. The whales were consistently traveling West towards San Juan Channel. We watched the whales for about a half an hour and then decided to go look for other wildlife before returning back to the whales later.
We went to Flattop Island, a designated wildlife refuge, and saw some harbor seals hauled out, including one small pup. Pupping season is starting to get into full swim for this species of seals. We then stopped at the Cactus Islands and saw a few bald eagles perched close to the shoreline. After that we went to the South side of Spieden Island and met back up with the T49A’s. The whales were behaving the same as before, consistently traveling West. They seemed to be on a mission!
We had an exceptional day out on the water with all of the whales and wildlife you could ask for, and thankfully because of the whales close proximity we got to spend quite a bit of time with them.