Whale Watching Report

We started our trip out today cruising north through Rosario Straits. We Slowed down at Pointer Island and saw several harbor seals hauled out on the island. Within a few minutes we also saw a bald eagle perched on a marker nearby. The crew searched hard for our three resident orca pods all the way up to Point Roberts, but we couldn't find them. We weren't alone because none of the other boats could find the residents this morning either. So we headed south toward Patos Island to look at some transient orcas just north of the east point of Saturna and Tumbo Islands. As soon as we got on scene with the orcas we saw several of them breaching!! As we got closer they all went down for a long dive, and then suddenly one of the big males broke the silence with a huge breach right in front of us! Two males were swimming together, and another group of 6-8 females and calves were swimming close together nearby. We decided to follow the two males closely as they swam side by side with the other group nearby in the background. One of the males cartwheeled twice, and both of them did several taillobs. At one point one of the males was taillobbing upside down at the same time that the other was tailslapping right side up. Soon the larger group of females started porpoising at high speeds, then they slowed down and we saw two breaches and a cartwheel! Next our two males surfaced several times close by and one of them was arching his belly up into the air and raising his tail flukes at the end of the maneuver. He did this three times! Just before we said goodbye to the orcas one of the males raised his tail flukes high into the air as if to wave goodbye to us. On the way back to the dock we saw harbor porpoises on two different occasions. We had a long trip today, but patience paid off as everybody was happy to get such a great show of transient orcas out of it. Naturalist Bart Rulon