Bald Eagles, T75B’s & a rainbow cloud on 6/25/24

June 23

Right as we started serving lunch, Casey and I saw a spout in the distance. Turns out it was the T37 killer wales. They were going for depper dives and hard to track. Then we realized the T34’s were with them, and we even saw a spy hop!
After our hour with them we headed over to Obstruction Point where there were reports of 10 orcas. We found the T65B’s and T123’s and spent close to an hour with them. One of the males popped up close to the boat!
We saw the T37 and 34’s again on the way home in Bellingham Bay, but they were still deep diving so we headed home pretty soon after.

 

June 24

We had an amazing day today!

Stellar Sea Lions were fighting for space on the buoys this morning, with several falling off and jumping right back on the marker.

We quickly found T49C Nielson over by Turn Island, when he breached as soon as we settled into being on scene, It was an amazing full body breach! He tucked himself into some narrow channels after that, so we left him behind for another report just about 25 mins away, near Anacortes were we met up with the T46B1’s and T37’s

A mixed matriline group of 7 whales including Thread and Pizzafin. This group had 10 minute downtimes, but consistently came up in a close huddle, with great long slow moves to see their saddle patches. We followed them all the way up Bellingham Channel, for an excellent long viewing.

 

June 25

Long haul out to the west side of San Juan Island today to find the T75B’s.

We saw many Bald Eagles and some very sleepy Stellar sea lions along the way.

Beautiful day on the water with some pretty calm seas. As we rounded Spieden Island, we saw a rainbow cloud, called cloud iridescence. This is caused by water droplets or ice crystals scattering sunlight.

We came upon the T75Bs just a bit north of Lime Kiln on the west side of San Juan Island. They were hugging the Shore for a while until they decided to come out and play through the kelp beds. We saw a few belly rolls, seeing their undersides and the tail just below the surface, there was also some logging behavior and some interesting lunges.

T75B Pebbles
T75B2 Jasper
T75B3 Rubble
T75B4 2021 Calf

 

June 26

The water was really choppy this morning and there were no sightings yet. So we headed deeper into the islands for calmer waters.
We later heard sightings of J Pod and we caught a moment of the group as they headed out to open ocean.
We then headed up to Alden Bank to search for a gray whale spotted earlier that day. We lucked out when the whale popped up close to us, giving us a few excellent views.

June 27
Today was Captain Cassidy’s first solo whale watch and she did amazing! We started our day off at Viti Rocks where we saw bald eagles, harbor seals, and lots of other birds. There was a harbor seal splashing and spinning.

We headed south through Bellingham channel where we met up with a juvenile humpback, It was so cute! We got to see it tail fluke a couple times, and then it splashed a bit on the last dive.

We got word that there were some Biggs coming South in Bellingham Channel so we made our way through there again. They were moving so fast at 10 knots!They were pretty spread out, but we got to see some great looks at some saddle patches and eye patches.

On our way home we also found a minke! It gave us the slip but we got to see a few breaths.

There were some Stellers on a buoy, and one splashing around in the water.

 

Amazing t

o see the whale Trifecta!