Whale Watching Report

Today, the Island Explorer 3 is on-scene with Gray Whales - that's 45 tours in a row with the whales. Our Gray Whale program from Everett has had a 100% sighting success rate for 2008 and 2009! Our last Gray Whale Tour from Everett will be Friday, May 8th. While we had a great spring season in Everett and are sad to leave, we are really excited to start our Orca Whale tours from Anacortes on Saturday, May 9th. Southern Resident Orca Whales were sighted in the area yesterday for the first time in over 30 days - so, our timing looks good...that's exactly why we focus on Gray Whales in the spring.
For details on today's tour, check back for an update from Naturalist Bart Rulon. We had some rain today on our trip but the wildlife didn't mind at all. We started out with sightings of three California sea lions. Next Captain Michael spotted our first gray whale. This whale was taking some deep dives and raising his tail flukes into the air before each long dive. We soon realized that this whale was a new one to the area for this year. We decided to cruise around some more and look for more whales. We eventually came back to the area with our first whale, but we found another one instead that gave us some good close up views right before we returned to the dock. Other wildlife spotted today included western grebes, bald eagles, ospreys, and a red-necked grebe. Naturalist Bart Rulon