Guests aboard M/V Sea Lion along with the Captain Gabe, naturalist Alexandria and myself had the most rewarding encounter today! Heading out for our second trip of the day, we were so excited to have seen the Southern Resident Orcas and were hoping they were still around and within our reach. Reports we were getting were not very encouraging and we were hesitant to go their way because it seemed that they were barely in our reach and moving quite fast north (opposite way of us)...

Captain Pete, naturalist Alexandria and I were excited to work together on this rare rainy day in July on the San Juan Islands. During the summer, the islands stay dry and we usually don’t see rain until mid-September again! Without any whale reports in the area yet this morning, we decided to head North up the San Juan Channel and see what we could find. On the way up, we came close to the West side of Orcas and cut through the inside of Yellow island scanning the waters in that...

Jordan | July 9, 2018 | M/V Kestrel | 2:00

What a great trip we had today! Even though it was a bit cloudy and cold and it began to rain, the animals sure made up for it! As we traveled north, we stopped by Turn Point on Stuart Island to check out a bald eagle perched right next to the lighthouse! We were so absorbed with the eagle that we almost didn’t notice the huge pod of orca whales sneaking up on us! All of a sudden, we turned around and saw orcas headed straight toward us!

We...

Captain Mike, Naturalist Alexandria and I were excited to be on the water on this VERY hot summer day. We had not heard of any reports in our area yet this morning, so we were a little anxious leaving the harbor with a full boat of hopeful guests. Some other boats had found a humpback on the West side of San Juan Island, but we were hoping that we would be able to find our own whales, so we headed up North towards the Canadian Gulf Islands. The whole way up the channel, our eyes were...

Naturalist Sarah | 06/22/2018 | M/V Kestrel | 10:00am

What a whirlwind of a trip! Leaving Friday Harbor, Captain gabe and I had no reports of orcas… not unusual for our morning trips! Since we work with a spotting network spread out through the region, usually our sightings start rolling in as boats leave their harbors. We decided to leave our slip and head north through President’s Channel towards what we call the Outer Islands of the San Juans: Patos, Matia, and Sucia Islands...

[Sarah – 05/26/2018 – M/V Kestrel –  2:00pm]

On our second trip of the day Captain Mike and I decided to head north out of Friday Harbor! There was beautiful water, and good reports to our north, which was for the best as the water conditions to our south had deteriorated. We loaded up our guests and took off!

Our first whale encounter was with a pair of humpback whales cruising the South Pender Island shoreline and circling out into Boundary Pass. These whales are usually solitary...

[Naturalist Sarah – 06/12/2018 – M/V Kestrel – 10:00am]

The whale watching has been great lately! We are entering what local naturalists are calling the “new normal.” The diversity of our ecosystem is shifting, and we are seeing that reflected most notably in our local orca populations. With a drop in our local salmon population we are seeing less and less of our Southern Resident killer whales in our inland waterways. Traditionally we expect to see members of J, K & L Pods from...

June 10, 2018 | M/V Sea Lion | 5:30 Sunset 

Today the 5:30 sunset tour hosted a small group of enthusiastic whale lovers! Captain Pete and I heard reports of orcas heading north along the east side of San Juan Island so we decided to head around the north end of the island and down the east side to meet them.

As we neared Lime Kiln, the first spouts were detected! Eventually we realized that multiple groups were swimming around the boat: the T86s, T100s and T101s. These beautiful...

[Friday – 4/6/18 – 12:00 – M/V Sea Lion – Naturalist Erick]

Today was a perfect Pacific Northwest day. This morning was completely covered with a misty low-level cloud cover. It was only about 1,000 feet high, so it masked the tallest hills in the islands and scraped the tops of the evergreen forest covering the islands. This is the weather that this area is known for and what it was meant to look like. As Captain Mike and I took a small group out with us to go look for some whales...

Naturalist Rachel, M/V Sea lion, March 28, 2018      

Today we were lucky to find an abundance of wildlife in the San Juan Islands.  First we headed to Spieden Island where we saw a large haul out of Steller’s Sea Lions.  We also spotted some non-native sheep as well.  We then went up to Canada where we saw a lone Pacific white sided dolphin, commonly referred to as lags.  This was the first time in multiple years that either Brian or I had observed these charismatic creatures.  This...