Orca Whales Just North of Anacortes!
The Island Explorer 3 is on-scene with Orca Whales! Stay tuned to the Whale Report for an update from Naturalist Bart Rulon! Click on this link to see the location of the Orca Whales from space! We had one of our best, and longest orca shows of the year on today's trip. We started out heading north through Rosario Straits. Our first stop was at Peapod Rocks where we checked out several harbor seals and a bald eagle perched on one of the rocks. We also saw several harbor porpoise in this area too. This morning we were the first boat to find the orcas on the west side of Lummi Island. Captain Carl, first mate, Brooke, and I were all up in the wheel house looking hard for orcas, and all three of us saw a huge splash at the same time off in the distance. A few seconds later an orca came breaching out of the water to make another splash!! That was a pretty good sign as to what the rest of our day would hold. As we approached the scene one orca swam right toward us and breached several times, twice right next to the boat. These orcas were very active, doing lots of breaching, spyhops, and cartwheels. We saw members of all three pods and they were spread out like a wall across Rosario Straits. Early on we saw many J-pod members like Ruffles, J1, Spieden, J8, and Blackberry, J27. Blackberry was swimming close by for a long time, and every once in a while he would breach, or do a cartwheel at close range. K22, Sekiu was hanging out with much of J-pod, and ,Faith, L57 came by for a visit too. We definitely had all three pods today for an official superpod day. It was hard to tell passengers which way to look because breaches were happening in all directions, close by and off in the distance. Other orcas we watched at close range included Slick, J16, Alki, J36, Mike, J26, and J42, Spock, K20, and Comet, K38. The orcas swam us gradually back to the Fidalgo Island area so we were able to spend maximum time with them. They were very entertaining today making this one of our best days of the season. Naturalist Bart Rulon
posted by Island Adventures Whale Report @ 11:16 AM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Absolutely amazing. We're up from San Diego with our 8-year old triplets for their older sister's wedding. The kids have seen many killer whales in San Diego. Beautiful, but only in a tank. This was our best day up here. Unforgettable. Sitting on the bow of a ship, watching Orcas all around and listening to John Denver singing "Calypso" was so surreal. Thanks for a wonderful, well worth the money, experience.
The Hawkins Family
Oceanside, Ca
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