Kurt Leipold capturing humpback Uluka on 7/28/24

July 28

Today was a long run out to the Strait of Juan de Fuca to see if we could spot a humpback that was last reported by a PWWA vessel 30 mins before we arrived. We found the whale already 5 miles from its last known location. Pretty speedy for a humpback.

BCX1702 – Uluka gave us great views of its tail fluke, fluking for every surfacing. We were able to get a great overall idea of the whale’s size due to the continual high surface arching dives it was doing.

Uluka is an interesting humpback in that we do not know its current breeding grounds. The whale was first seen in 2015 here in the Salish sea, but has been documented in Maui or Baja California.

On the way home, we stopped by the Peapods for harbor seals and the Sinclair navigational marker to see steller sea lions actively kicking each other off the can.

 

July 29

Today’s whale watch took us down to Green Point off Anacortes for a humpback whale. The humpback was busy doing wide circles between Anacortes and James Island, combing the area for feeding.

We lost the whale for a short bit, until it popped up behind us in the distance, doing a lot of tail slapping and also a cartwheel!

We cruised up to meet up with it again and got to see it give us many good tail flukes.

The humpback has only been reported once before, so it is exciting to have a whale new to the area!

BCX 2204

 

July 30

Today started out with no sightings, but we were optimistic!

We ended up seeing a lone male near Crane Island. It was such a treat! He was identified to be T65A2, Indy, who travels alone.

He is also known to be a very playful individual with a big personality and we definitely witnessed that. The entire time we were with him, he was playing with a crab pot, and boy did he move it far. We would see the crab pot buoys act as a bobber. ie: when he would pull on it, it would disappear beneath the surface. It was fun to watch.

We also got to see a lot of seals, sea lions, and porpoise.

Also, Indy showed us his tail a few times and a breach!!

 

July 31

We started on our way with Eliza Rock where we saw some harbor seals. Then we made our way south and ended up watching a minke whale at Salmon Bank.

He was giving us some great looks at his dorsal fin and back. We also got to hear it breathe! This was my first time this year watching a Minke!

Then we traveled up the west side of San Juan Island where we saw three humpbacks! We rarely see more than one, so this was a special sight. They were showing us awesome tail flukes high in the air. There was also a mom and calf. Beautiful day on the water!

We also saw a lot of very large Steller sea lions hauled out rocks as they do.

 

Aug 1

We started our trip going north up Hale Passage to see harbor seals at Pt Migley. We also saw three Steller sea Lions on a buoy at North Lummi

We continued north toward East Point in search of humpbacks. There had been reports of one near Active Pass hours before that we were hoping to find. The whale watch fleet hadn’t had much luck yet for the day.

We spotted blows just northwest of Saturna Island that Cpt Matt took us over to check out. The animals were small and took us a minute to be sure, but we had two young humpback whales! They gave us many surfacings where they came up together and also tail fluked together!

 

BCZ 0503 – Harpy and Neowise 2020

 

Aug 2

We started with some seals and Viti and then some sea lions on a buoy. We made our way through the middle of the islands before heading south out through Cattle Pass where we met up with a Minke.

The minke was being pretty illusive, circling around the bank, and coming up for short, quick breaths in different places and directions each time. So it was tough to follow and spot the whale, but we did get several surfacings, so most folks got to see them briefly at least once, and were pretty happy.

We gave out bummer cards, since we only had the one illusive sighting, and all the passengers were very excited to come back.

 

Aug 3

We started with the classic stops at Viti and a Sinclair buoy tor seals

and sea lions. We headed for the middle island search route for an hours-old report of Indy, T65A5. About ten minutes after we’d gone through Peavine Pass we turned back around, because Peniel, the whale watching sailboat, picked up five orcas just on the other side of the pass.

It was pretty foggy in Rosario, which is why no one else found them.

We stayed with them as they traveled from Peavine up to Pt. Lawrence, hugging the Orcas Island shore. Nothing too crazy, but we did get close passes on our first few looks. And it was a whale salad – T172, two of the T117’s, and two T36As.

People were very happy even with no naturalist – Cpt Cassidy narrated the wildlife which deckhand Quincy did a great job mingling at the helm while we watched whales.