Whale Watching Report

We started out our day with several great sightings of purple sea stars on the pilings and rocks as we worked our way out of Cap Sante Marina. Then within a few minutes we spotted a bald eagle perched in a tree on Fidalgo Island. By the time we reached Rosario Straits the fog was thick. We drove trough the fog for about an hour working our way southwest. We did stop Briefly at Colville Island to check out a bunch of harbor seals hauled out on the rocks. By the time we hit salmon Bank, off San Juan Island, the fog was starting to clear. We found the orcas just northeast of Discovery Island in Canada. It was J-pod and K-pod heading east. They were in a sleeping pattern with K-pod orcas and J-pod orcas gathered in two separate groups. We started out watching K-pod up close. Cappuccino, K21, and Raggedy, K4o were two orcas we saw a lot of up close. We could see J-pod orcas swimming 250 yards away as we were watching K-pod up close. As they got closer to San Juan Island it was obvious that they were starting to wake up and spread out. Lobo, K26, did several upside down tail slaps, and we saw four spy hops within 15 minutes. Just as we had our last viewing of orcas for the day we spotted Mega, L-41 heading south. So we were able to see orcas from all three resident pods today. On the way back home captain Carl spotted a minke whale near Iceberg Point. We only had about 15 minutes to watch the minke whale but it was worth it because it came shooting out of the water twice lunge feeding! Other species seen today included pelagic cormorants, brandt's cormorants, rhinoceros auklets, glaucous-winged gulls, harbor porpoises, one common murre, and the first Heermann's gull arrival of the year! Naturalist - Bart Rulon