Whale Watching Report

We started our journey today with a bald eagle sighting right off the bat outside Cap Sante Marina. We decided to work our way through the inner San Juan Islands, and north to get the best chance to find whales today. Our resident pods were found heading southwest in Boundary Pass. We arrived on the scene and orcas seemed to be everywhere. They were spread out over several miles. We saw mostly J-pod, and L-pod orcas, but other boats on scene also saw K-pod orcas too. The first big group of orcas we paralleled included Ruffles, J1, Granny, J2, Blackberry, J27, Polaris, J28, and others. One orca did a big cartwheel from that group! Soon we could see orcas in all directions. We saw a steady stream of orca breaches during our entire visit! Toward the end our our time with the orcas we had the engines shut down and a group came in behind us chasing fish at the surface. Mystery L85 sliced through the water after a fish, then he changed directions and swam over to us, giving all our passengers great views of his big dorsal fin. Other wildlife we spotted today included harbor porpoises, harbor seals, rhinoceros auklets, Canada geese, turkey vultures, pelagic cormorants, double-crested cormorants, Brandt's cormorants, a belted kingfisher, and a common loon. It was a great day! Naturalist Bart Rulon