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Whale Party - J Pod and L pod Orcas off San Juan Island

orcas

Yesterday was amazing! The past few days the residents have come back into the Salish Sea and have been traveling up an down the islands foraging for salmon, and we hope they find plenty of them! A great place to find the Southern Residents in the islands is on the west side of San Juan Island which is part of the Haro Strait. The salmon migrate from the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and start to head north, most of them are heading towards the largest river around, The Fraser River, to complete their life cycles. Since the Resident Orcas predominantly eat salmon they follow these salmon runs. We were lucky enough to see both L pod and J pod meeting up on this west side and boy was it a party! Orcas are super social creatures and a large part of each of their days are spent socializing. There was tail slapping, and cartwheeling, and breaching everywhere from the oldest of them to the youngest of them. We saw a few separate matrilines (families) separately socializing then join up together to socialize together, and near the beginning we saw a group of adult males hanging out together separately from the rest having their own social time apart. Woah! What another crazy day out here. Whale folks until next time.

 

Naturalist Erick

M/V Sea Lion

San Juan Safaris

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