Piper | Friday, September 27, 2019 | M/V Sea Lion | 12:00 PM
Captain Sarah, Alexandria, and I ventured out into the Salish Sea with a really awesome group of folks and reports of whales swimming about! We headed north into San Juan Channel and when we got to the top of San Juan Island we headed west towards the city of Sidney, BC. Along the way we spotted a few harbor porpoises in the Haro Strait and a haul out of harbor seals on a small Canadian island!
Shortly after passing by Sidney we arrived on scene with a group of Bigg’s killer whales! This was a group of four mammal-eating orcas, the T18s, consisting of T18 “Esperanza” and T19 “Nootka”, two adult females, and T19’s kids, T19B “Galiano” or “Mr. Floppy Fin” and T19C “Spouter”.
The whales were hunting around a reef at the top of Saanich Inlet and it was super fun to see as three of the whales circled around the rock while we got great looks at T19C before the group dynamic changed again. They all got together and one of them spyhopped before they split again! We were then watching T19B and one of the older females travel south closer to us while T19C and the other female were farther out, following behind. While we were on scene the weather really picked up and we even got to see hail hitting the top of the sea! We eventually made our way away from the orcas and back towards Friday Harbor through some dramatic skies and luckily flat seas. Quite the adventurous day on the water!