Whale Watching Report

Top Photo - A breach photo during our morning trip.
Bottom Photo - J39 breaching during our afternoon trip.














Today's weather was spectacular all day today. The water looked like a lake out there for the morning trip and only a slight breeze by the afternoon, with sunshine all day. Last night J-pod headed north so we headed north this morning to look for them. Knowing we would be going a long way to find them we didn't make many stops along the way. We did stop briefly to watch two bald eagles perched in the trees at the southeast end of Guemes Island. Later in Rosario Straits we saw several harbor seals in the water and lots of gulls feeding on bait balls, including my first Bonaparte's gull sightings of the season. We also saw several harbor porpoise on our way up. We found J-pod just south of Point Roberts angling toward East Point. Faith, L57, was also swimming with J-pod as he has been doing often lately, and we got a good look at him right off the bat when we arrived on the scene. We also watched Ruffles, J1, for a while. Orcas were spyhopping all over the place today it seemed, especially in the beginning of our visit. Next we watched Shachi, J19, Eclipse, J41, and Spieden, J8, Swimming together for a long time. Spieden did a spyhop for us at close range. We also saw several breaches, carwheels, and taillobs during our first trip. Naturalist Bart Rulon

Our afternoon trip started out with a surprise in Rosario Straits. Captain Carl noticed some splashing around. He and I watched to try and figure out what it was. A minke whale surfaced then a few moments later we both said whoa at the same time when the minke whale shot straight out of the water for a breach. We watched this big minke whale for several more surfaces before heading into the inner San Juan Islands on our way to look for orcas on the west side of the San Juans. Through the inner islands we spotted bald eagles and several harbor seals. The word from other boats out there was that J-pod was at the northwest end of San Juan Island heading south. We were heading in that direction, but about 6 miles before we could get there we found some J-pod orcas of our own near False Bay. It was Blackberry, J27, Tsuchi, J31, and Mako, J39. Blackberry gave us many close up looks and he did a lot of changing directions, probably chasing fish. Mako breached for us three times in a row! Later as this small subpod turned around to head north we had a minke whale pop right up in the middle of them. It seemed like this minke wanted to join J-pod because he was swimming right along with them. At one point the minke whale was very close to Blackberry as he picked up speed to catch up with Tsuchi and Mako who had started to porpoise quickly northward out in front of him. Naturalist Bart Rulon