Plan a visit to San Juan Island this spring for a weekend filled with farm and food activities. This first annual event will include more than 15 farms and island restaurants serving locally-grown foods. Visitors can experience everything from the farmers' market and farm tours, to cooking classes and wine releases, to educational farming workshops. For a detailed list of activities, dates and times, click here. Just contact the listed farms and restaurants directly to book...

Hello intrepid adventurers! As you know, some days are good, some days are bad and some are hard to define. Is it automatically a bad day if there are no orcas? What if there are whales or eagles or porpoises or just really lovely weather? What if you miss the ferry that you really wanted to be on, but you now get to explore the town of Friday Harbor and have dinner overlooking the water? There are many subtle shades of grey that make of the content of a day and therefore define...

We had a last minute private charter today. I was scheduled to laminate, type and answer phones from 8am to 5pm, when in the middle of the afternoon, a man called wanting to charter the boat. His family from Denmark had been delayed an extra week in the states, not able to make it home because of the ash over Europe. The Icelandic that volcano grounded all planes. A lovely family, they enjoyed talking amongst themselves, and translating the stories and facts to their grandmother. The...

You never can tell how a day will turn out. Even ones that seem to have the least number of prospects can turn out to be the most exciting. As was the case yesterday. With Capt. Craig driving the M/V Sea Lion, Capt. Jeff motoring along in the M/V Kittiwake and Nancy, Lauren and me crewing, we headed off on a northern wildlife tour. As we neared Spieden Island though our plans changed drastically with the receipt of a report of transient orcas outside of Victoria Harbor. Away we...

The whale road that is. Well, world's largest dolphin road to be exact. That is right, today we saw orcas! A small pod of transient orcas was spotted on the east side of Lopez Island near a reef called Bird Rock. When we arrived on scene it was to find two males and 3-4 female transient orcas in an active feeding pattern. We did not get to see any confirmed kills, but they were definitely an active bunch with lots of diving and not much time spent at the surface. We were able...

Can you believe it?  Winter is gone and we are back on the water again!

Hello all, it is me, your intrepid marine naturalist here to guide you, teach you, entertain you and celebrate with you all things orca and wildlife. It was a wet but mild winter and now we have graduated to a cool blustery spring. The skies are happy, the plants and wildlife are happy and we salty dogs are happy to be back at what we love. Traveling the waterways of the San Juan Islands.

Today we took our...

This will be my last post of the season....we are now officially finished with all daily trips. My my how the summer has blown by! We'll still be running whale watching & wildlife tours for the next 3 Saturdays of October...the 10th, 17th, & 24th.

A wonderful way to end my season out here with Orcas still in the waters! A bit of a breezy day with whitecaps and chop, the wind out of the north, and the crisp feeling of autumn in the air. The Orcas were first seen coming south from...

All good things must come to an end and this is just about it. Today was our last weekday trip of the season. As of tomorrow, we will only be going out on Saturdays through the month of October and then we will be done for good. Do not despair though, the orcas will be back next season and so will we. In the meantime, here is the address of a blog that is both educational and entertaining and will satisfy your daily hunger for blog sustenance.

http://bitterendblog.com/

It is not...

What a season this has been. This is my first year working out on the boats and I love it. I always knew that I would be a good boat person and I am. I have turned into such a wharf rat, it is unbelievable. Even on days that I am not scheduled to be out, that is the only place that I want to be. At the end of the day, if there is still sunlight, then there is still time to be on the water. And it is not just the orcas that have made this such an outstanding experience, even...

To sum up yesterday and today's whale watching tours:
The Orcas are still here!

Yahoo! It's been a fabulous September for viewing our Resident Killer Whales.

Yesterday we met members of J & K pod a mile or 2 off of Eagle Point, San Juan Island. They were very spread out with frequent changes in direction...lots of foraging going on! Gulls were swooping in looking for scraps of salmon that the Orcas had left behind.

On our way back in we saw a Harbor Seal with a huge salmon in...