A shot from Laurie Russel on 7/16/24

July 14

We came upon three pods this day! The T49A’s were at Friday Harbor, and on the way back we saw the T75B’s and T77’s at Blakely Shoal.

 

July 16

We started off with seals at Viti Rocks and then quite the show from some sea lions fighting for a spot on a buoy. 

We headed out toward Sucia where we saw to T37A’s and T65B1’s who joined and hung out with the 37A’s for a bit. Right away we saw a breach which is always exciting. They put on quite the show with 3-4 more breaches, lots of tails slaps, rolls, and pectoral waving, as well as a few spy hops.

They seemed to have caught something and were eating and celebrating together. We spent over an hour with them, exhibiting their behaviors the whole hour!

We even saw a unique headstand behavior where one whale just kept sitting still with their tail straight up out of the water.

 

July 17

We saw more really interesting behavior today! We headed straight out to Active Pass in Canadian waters to see the T65B’s As soon as we got on scene, they were very active and it looked like Birdsall and a calf named Nettle were playing while Chunk and the newer calf hung back.

There was lots of rolling, tail slapping, and a breach. Then it seemed like Birdsall was trying to mate with Nettle for around an hour. Captain Casey had seen this exact behavior from these whales last year.

We go to hear the whales vocalize above the surface 3-5 times and the calf was very playful with mom, jumping a lot with a few full breaches and spy hops. We got a great show with very interesting behavior.

 

July 18

The only reports today were in Canada.

We stopped at Viti to see a few different bird species and seals. Then we saw three sea lions on a navigation marker.

We went over the north end of Orcas Island and came through Johns pass, where there was a boat that lost power. We offered to help, but they decided to anchor.

We caught up to the T109’s at Mandarte Island in Canadian waters and they immediately started hunting. Lots of rolling, tails, fast lunging, etc. They circumnavigated the island and we saw some kelping.

After that, they were in travel Mode.

 

July 19

We headed straight up the Strait of Georgia toward a report of 8 Biggs. We got up there around 12:45 right when the group was splitting up, but were able to spend an hour with 6 whales from three different pods: the T75B’s, T77C, and T77 D’s.

They were surfacing all together for a few breaths pretty consistently and then had fairly long downtimes, around 4-5 minutes.

 

July 20

We expected a tough search today, but we lucked out and the T46B’s popped up right off Vendovi almost as soon as we arrived.

They gave us a great show, and we stayed with them for around an hour and got to see some headstands and a spy hop.

We left for lunch, planning to stop back by them on our way back, but we had some transmission trouble with the boat, so we slowly headed straight back to the dock.