Gray whale in Bellingham Bay, Big Mama and an unidentified fellow humpback, bald eagles, and the Schooner Zodiac with Mt Baker on our first whale watch of 2026.  By Lincoln Humphry

 

May 1st

What a day to start off our first trip of the season! Beautifully warm sunny weather and calm waters.
In what may be a record, we spotted a gray whale 16 minutes after pushing off the dock! The whale was taking long 10 minute down times, but a surprise change in direction gave us excellent views right by us!
We went on to explore some smaller islands, cruising by the Cone Islands spotting a few bald eagles perched in the tree tops.
Rosario Strait had quite a few large bait balls of fish attracting hundreds of sea birds. Lots of diving activity, and a stellar sea lion showed up to join in the feast.
After exploring the harbor seal haulout at Peapod Rocks, Captain Casey gave us the call to head towards Matia for a pair of humpback whales he spotted while heading out to fish on his day off.
We got to watch the humpback whales surface together multiple times, but only one whale was showing their tail flukes. We submitted a photo to the happywhale.com database, and later ID’d this whale as Big Mama! The first sighting this year! The other one wasn’t identifiable, which can be exciting too. New whales keep coming to the Salish Sea, and we see more and more every year. We’re excited to be back on the water.

May 2nd

A bit breezy on the water today, but we were again graced with a quick sighting of the gray whale off the dock! It was the same gray whale from the day before, so it seems to be hanging out in the Bay for the time being.
The whale spent a while feeding off the Eliza Island embankment. We saw some quite high arches from this gray today, with lots of fluking too showing us it’s beautiful tail.
We headed further south today, where there were reports of several different species! We were happy to join the scene with the Barnes Lake male duo, T49A2 Jude and T51 Roswell, 2 adult male Bigg’s orcas that are unrelated to each other but often travel together. The whales were split by about a half mile from each other, so we were watching Jude until he quickly changed direction and sped off toward Roswell. They met back up and then slowed way down, surfacing together and giving us that great iconic look of their 6ft dorsals.
Harbor porpoise were out in great numbers today as well. Our journey back home through Bellingham Channel had them on every side of the boat. We even saw some harbor porpoise breaches! Excellent multi species whale watch.

May 3rd

Naturalist Emily’s first public whale watching trip of the season! It was so good to be back at our wildlife spots again. It was a gorgeous day and we saw a bald eagle at Viti Rocks with our favorite harbor seals and cormorant friends. From there we trended south towards Anacortes to early reports of humpback whales. As we arrived we realized there were three of them! This is pretty irregular for traveling humpbacks, as they tend to be solo or pair travelers.

It was so so good to see some familiar whales! We got to hangout with Olympus, who is a descendent of Big Mama. She was with Kelpie and another young humpback who was born in 2024. We saw so many tail flukes, with some being directly under Mt Baker on a gorgeous clear day. At one point, one of the three HBs stuck their pectoral fin straight into the air. We eventually departed and traveled north to Peapod Rocks, then through Clark and Barnes over the top of Lummi Island. It was such a good first whale watching trip!