[Naturalist Sarah – 10/24/2017 – M/V Sea Lion – 12:00]

Today felt more like a summer day than a late October departure! With clear blue skies and a great group of guests Captain Brian and I were excited to explore the Salish Sea on the search for whales.

Leaving the harbor we elected to head north towards the Canadian Gulf Islands. Unusually for this time of year we had a report of killer whales before leaving the dock. There had been vocalizations on the hydrophone reported in the...

[Naturalist Sarah – 10/13/2017 – M/V Sea Lion – 12:00pm]

On Friday we had a lovely trip to find wildlife. We enjoyed beautiful water as we cruised over to the Canadian border and towards Victoria. On these fall days sometimes we need to go a bit out of our way to find whales and other wildlife. Captain Mike and I decided to go the extra mile to show our guests some orcas!

Just outside of the city’s harbor we found the T011s, a mother-son pair of orcas. This is one of my favorite...

09/18/17 – M/V Sea Lion – 12 PM

We left Friday Harbor with reports of whales North of Orcas Island.  We headed in that direction and along the way we got some great looks at a number of different harbor porpoise pods.  Harbors porpoises usually travel in groups of around four or five individuals but occasionally you will see larger congregations of them together in good feeding areas. 

We reached the whale sighting and found the T101’s headed North towards Canada.  The T101’s are a...

[09/12/17- M/V Sea Lion- Kelsey, Naturalist- 12:00PM]

Boy, was today foggy! As we left Friday Harbor on M/V Sea Lion, the day was overcast, but visibility was great! Then juuuust as we hit Cattle Point on the south side of San Juan Island, we hit a wall of fog in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But, that wasn’t going to dampen our spirits! We were determined to find orca whales.

We were talking with boats out on the water who were with Southern resident killer whales, but we even had to...

[09/08/2017- M/V Kestrel- Kelsey, Naturalist- 2:00PM]

Today brought some drizzle, fog, and cloud cover (which has brought the smoke down quite a bit, yay!), but by the afternoon we had some better visibility and could forge our way south to an orca whale report!

M/V Kestrel zipped down to Port Townsend, but not before stopping at a Tufted puffin in Cattle Pass! It’s very rare to be seeing these clownish birds in our range, much less on the south point of San Juan Island! It was so...

[08/19/17- M/V Sea Lion- Kelsey, Naturalist- 1:30PM]

We had quite some luck today! We had some transient, or mammal-eating, orcas juuust off the north end of San Juan Island near Henry Island just as we were departing Friday Harbor. We had them easily within reach, and we decided to take our time to see them by detouring around some of the special islands here in the San Juans.

We first visited Flattop Island, where we spotted bunches of harbor seals hauled out on the shorelines and...

[8/12/17- M/V Sea Lion- Kelsey, Naturalist- 1:30PM & 5:30PM]

Some days are just so perfect it doesn’t seem real. And when not one, but TWO trips turn out to be beautifully perfect, it’s a pretty surreal day!

Both trips saw some transient killer whales (or mammal-eating orcas), but there were two separate groups on the same path of travel! In the afternoon, we went south from Friday Harbor to Cattle Point, and there by Whale Rocks were some orcas! We viewed them briefly, and then we...

(7/23/17- M/V Sea Lion- 5:30 PM)

This evening we departed from our Friday Harbor dock with reports of some of our Southern Resident Killer Whales heading up the west side of San Juan Island.  This is only my fourth time seeing these whales all season, so our guests today got a real treat. 

We headed up San Juan Channel where we stopped by some rocks and saw a few harbor seals hauled out while the tide was out.  Harbor seals haul out usually once a day in order to warm their body...

[7/24/17- M/V Kittiwake- Kelsey, Naturalist- 11:30AM]

Today, we had a water taxi from Friday Harbor on San Juan Island to Orcas Island. What is so great about these is that the trips can be tailored to guests’ likings! For example, today we had whale reports in the area, so we made time to visit some whales and other awesome wildlife before heading over to the final destination. Flexibility made this trip pretty amazing!

We left Friday Harbor on M/V Kittiwake heading north. It wasn’t...

[7/6/17- M/V Kittiwake- 11:00AM Charter]

If you’re reading this and have already been out to the San Juan Islands, then I might be stating the obvious, but this area is STUNNING. And, today was no exception! Sunny and 75, we chugged out of Friday Harbor from San Juan Island to see what we could see.

The trip was off to a great start as we approached Speiden Island and saw some bald eagles. There was a single individual who was perched on a treetop, but behind it in the sky were about...