T60 D & E (Onca and Lynx) celebrating a porpoise hunt in Cattle Pass on 9/26

Sea lions at Whale Rocks, and an eagle by Eagle Bluff on 9/26 by Lincoln Humphry

 

Sept 22nd

An incredible day of multi-species. Our crew today were the lucky finders of both a minke and humpback whale down in the Strait of Juan de Fuca! We first came across the minke whale near Cattle Point lighthouse, and got to see it lunge feeding on little forage fish. The whale was pretty consistently circling and tipping its chin out of the water for some close views, which was very unusual and special for the “slinky minke”.

As we were preparing to leave, our captain saw a splash very far in the distance, so we decided to go check it out. Turned out to be Victory, a humpback that’s been spending its time in the big strait south of Lopez. Victory never fluked today, but was identified later by another vessel. Our journey home has us stopping at Bird Rocks, where the sea lions were busy grumbling at each other and splashing around in the water.

*We surprisingly stumbled on the T99 orcas right at the dock, just as I’d thought I’d finished this write up! We were preparing to dock, with fenders down when one of our crew spotted fins at Taylor dock, just around the corner from our dock point. We delayed docking so that we could watch Bella, Barakat, Puck, and the newly native named Qwiin qwiin oo quii la, who were killing dinner and rolling around in the water for their hunt. So much surface activity for our last minute triple species day.

 

Sept 23rd
This morning we enjoyed a flat, calm Bellingham Bay, where we were able to see lots of bird activity earlier than usual, including common murres, rhinoceros auklets, all sorts of gulls, and lots more. We then made our normal stop at Viti Rocks to see the thermoregulating harbor seals, and the cormorant nests on the south end of the rock. From there we went south towards Bellingham channel. We were lucky to see lots of harbor porpoise foraging in the tidal currents at the top of Guemes Island. Great looks at these elusive critters. We kept venturing south, with some nice views of the beautiful Burrows Island lighthouse.

We eventually were on scene with two baleen whales south of Lopez Island. We saw both a humpback whale and a minke whale! The minke whale was going the same direction as the humpback, and then made a drastic turn across our bow. We saw the rostrum from the close pass. We kept parallel with the humpback and got a tail fluke. We could have guessed that this was our dear friend Victory, based on her circles, location, and mostly shallow dives. We got one more tail fluke from her, and were able to track her movement from her footprints in the calm water.

We eventually departed and headed through Cattle Pass, not before stopping at Whale Rocks. This is a great spot to see giant Steller sea lions hauled out on land. In the evening, there was a T-party reported (multiple family groups of Biggs killer whales socializing) in northern Rosario Strait, with 33 individuals. We were hoping that they slowly traveled south so we would get the chance to see a few of them again today, so we got a spontaneous crew trip together on our smaller boat, and boy did we luck out. Countless breaches, spy hops, tail slaps and much more in every direction. An epic treat to begin to wind down our 2025 season.

 

Sept 24th

The T90s and the T101s were reported near Deception pass today, trending north, which works out great for us. We got to watch them in beautiful Burrows Bay. Within the T90s there was one large male who was traveling close to mom, and then the T101 brothers were following behind the rest. The lighting and weather was absolutely perfect today, backlighting their spouts against the rocky bluffs of Burrows Island.

After one of their deep dives, the group popped up at our 3 o’clock, and we were able to see these giant animals up close. We shut off our engines and just watched them swim by. We could see them swimming underwater, their white patches very apparent.
We decided to leave the whales for a while and take a detour to Bird Rocks. As you can imagine we saw lots of common marine birds, harbor seals, and lots of Steller sea lions swimming along the shorelines and in patches of kelp. We watched these pinnipeds for a while and then headed to spend a bit more time with our orca friends outside of Thatcher Pass before heading home.

 

Sept 26th

We had early reports this morning for orca brothers cruising the San Juan Island shoreline headed for some very choppy water, so we skipped our typical morning warm up stops to make some ground. When we arrived on scene, T60 D & E (Onca and Lynx) were travelling pretty quickly through Griffin Bay. We were tracking them well until they went for a deep dive behind a rock outcropping, and we lost sight of them for a few minutes. Turns out they had stopped for lunch, and were about to get really interesting.

We turned the boat around and watched these two big orca males work on killing a harbor porpoise, then they celebrated their meal with some awesome moves. There were so many tail slaps and lobs, and a few spectacular breaches! The weather was starting to really pick up where they were journeying, so we left them behind to continue our day.

Steller sea lions were abundant on Whale Rocks, lounging in the sunshine and we saw some more of them off the Sinclair buoy on our journey back to the dock. We had a few brief stops for harbor porpoise, harbor seals and a lovely bald eagle off of Peapod Rocks for our home route.

 

Sept 27th

Kara’s last whale watch of the season was spectacular! We got to see some really rare behaviour from the T49B1’s, as they were busy training their 3 year old calf how to hunt. This pod had a brand new baby in the group as well, which we got to see up close as the calf swam right under the boat!

Training for hunting happens from birth with orcas, but today’s hunt was pretty intense. The older siblings managed to immobilize a harbor seal and then were teaching the younger one multiple approach maneuvers. It was a stunning display of porpoising lunges, corralling and herding, as well as launching that seal into the air with tail lobs. The practice went on for nearly an hour before the group finally ate their catch. This was all finished off with a few spy hops for celebration.

An already amazing day turned brighter as we made our journey home and found two humpbacks on a journey out to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The whales turned out to be Divot and Two Spot and were doing some deep fluking dives with a steady travel pace. They gave us a great double-header day with two species of whales.