08/30/17- M/V Sea Lion- 1:30PM
Today we were lucky enough to find some transient killer whales on the North side of Orcas Island. Specifically, we were looking at the T36A’s, a nice group of whales consisting of females and juveniles.
People commonly ask the naturalists about the whale’s movement patterns and where we find the animals day to day. When we wake up in the morning we never know where we may be traveling for our tour that day. These animals move, on average, about 100 miles a day, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the way they move throughout their range. Moral of the story is that there are no predications involved when whale watching in the San Juan Islands.
We also see about the same movement from our transients as we do our residents. Based on their names, a lot of people assume that the residents are our “local” whales and the transients just come in and out of the area. This is a fair but inaccurate assumption, our residents have a wider range and spend less time in the calendar year here. In comparison, the transients generally have a smaller range and will spend more time in this area throughout the entire year, we assume that is because the mammals that they feed on are here year-round.
I would say that our guests today really enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time with these amazing creatures.
Naturalist, Rachel