Whale Watching Report

Our wildlife viewing started today as we exited Guemes Channel and watched two California sea lions, each on their own channel marker. Next we found a bald eagle perched on a dead tree in Washington Park, on Fidalgo Island. Then we got a treat close to home that we always hope for. We spotted orcas heading north in Rosario Straits just west of Burrows Island!! Its always awesome to find orcas this quickly. It turned out to be K-pod, with one L-pod orca tagging along. That L-pod orca was Onyx, L-87, and we got to see lots of him during our visit. At one time he was swimming around in circles as if to be chasing a salmon around. L87 was spending allot of time with Scoter, K25, and Georgia, K11. K-pod was pretty well spread out across Rosario Straits. We did get to see some playful activity as one orca cartwheeled, and others breached in the distance. Later as the orcas swam north toward Blakely Island we also saw Spock, K20, and Comet, K38. Knowing we could eventually come back to visit our orcas again we decided to peel off to look for more wildlife. We found another bald eagle on Cypress Island. Next we drove up to Peapod rocks where a pair of bald eagles were perched on a marker, and several harbor seals were hauled out on the shoreline. We started to see lots of bird activity north of Peapod rocks, and we drove up to investigate. We found several Steller sea lions were swimming around looking for food amongst the Bonaparte's gulls. We got to see a couple of them up close as they cruised along, and we also spotted several harbor porpoises. Finally we decided to catch up with K-pod again. They had worked their way up to the north end of Blakely Island by that time. The highlight of our second visit when we saw Lobo, K26, swimming with and babysitting the newest calf in K-pod, K42. K42 was breaching like crazy!! At one point he breached and flipped completely over in the air, landing squarely on his back (see photos above). What an ideal day we had today, with orcas very, very close to the dock, and lots of other wildlife on top of it. Naturalist Bart Rulon