Excited by an early morning report that a large number of Orcas had been sighted off Cattle Point on San Juan Island, we could not wait to get out on the water at noon. Heading north in San Juan Channel, our first stop was at Yellow Island to check out a healthy number of Harbor Seals hauled out on the rocks.  Next stop, Green Point at Speiden Island, where more than a few mammoth Stellar Sea Lions dove and rolled on all sides of the boat. Several Harbor Porpoises surfaced long...

     Yesterday Transients Orcas, today Residents Orcas! Traveling all the way to Mouat Point off North Pender Island, Canada, we caught up with members of J and K pod. Although the Orcas kept us on the move, we paused long enough to see foraging, plenty of tail-slapping, a slow-motion spy-hop by Sekiu (K-22), and an excellent full-body breach! It was also a treat to clearly hear vocalizations on our hydrophone.

     A stop at Green Point on Speiden Island on the way home gave us a...

     Exciting first day on the water! Not only were we rewarded with an unseasonably gorgeous, sunny day, but, after 1 ½ hours of getting to the whales (this is very unusual, usually we travel about 30 to 45 minutes), we caught up with approximately 7 Transients traveling in Swainson Channel, just off Salt Spring Island, and with Ganges Harbor in sight. Since transients tend to travel in very small groups, 3 – 5, our sighting today was exceptional.  Also exceptional was the fact that...

Yes, we saw orca whales today on the 2nd of October - late in the whale watching season.  We took off from Friday Harbor, San Juan Island heading north toward Spieden Island.  As we neared Speiden, one of the guests spotted a large brown head which turned out to be a great big stellar sea lion fishing by himself.  We stayed on the south side of Speiden and Shelly spotted a mature bald eagle up in a tree. Down below the Mouflon Sheep and Sitka Deer were roaming about.

We pushed on to...

Another fabulous day.

Our first stop was for a few Harbor Seals hauled out on the rocks.  Our second stop was for the ever elusive Harbor Porpoise.  It was one of the few times that I have seen a large number of them, too preoccupied while hunting, to care that we were watching.  Most of the time all we see is a little black blip at the surface and have to spend the next several minutes trying to convince passengers that the blip was actually a porpoise.  Today everyone got to see...

Summer seems to have left the islands as quickly as it arrived, but the animals are still around!  We headed out in to Haro Strait this afternoon and came across a group of Transient Orca.  The Residents haven't been seen in a day or two, but the Transients were a great encounter.  The mature male of the group had a huge dorsal fin which gave our passengers a very big target to photograph.

On the way home we added another cetacean to our check list when we came across a nice group of...

All summer I have been thinking everyone was pulling my leg telling me that summer just gets nicer and nicer and then September is the best month of the year.  I was convinced that it would be 40 degrees and raining by now.  I seem to have been mistaken.  This week has been the warmest of the year and it has been beyond beautiful on the water.

We left and headed south out of the harbor.  Fat seals were lazing on the rocks and Steller's Sea Lions were cruising around on the prowl in...

"What else could we have possibly have seen today?" was a great question that I was asked as we headed back into the harbor.  "Not much" was my answer.  We had an amazing encounter with resident whales today that started with them spread out all over the south west side of the island, merging into small groups, and ended with them meeting up, West Side Story style (without the violence), and then all swimming off into the sunset together.  There were somewhere between 20 and 30...

Well, we just did the math.  From August 1- 29 we have ran a total of 49 Whale Watches.  Of those 49 trips we successfully located whales 47 times.  And not just Orca, but Minke and Humpback Whales as well!!  That is a 96% success rate at seeing whales on our trips.

On top of whales we have also been seeing Stellar's Sea Lions, Harbor Seals, Harbor Porpoise, Dall's Porpoise, and Bald Eagles on a regular basis.  One day we even encountered an Elephant Seal.

Every day is different.  We...

Today we traveled all the way to Victoria to see one lone transient.  He was magnificent.  It was a long haul but when we arrived he appeared to be patrolling up and down the rocks.  He has one of the broadest dorsal fins I have ever seen.

The word on the street was that he had been harassing a sea lion prior to our arrival.  When we got there he was just cruising, back and forth along the rocks, occasionally rolling slightly on his side as if he was looking up toward the rocks to...