What a day, I don't even know where to begin on this blog! Today was one of those days (we seem to have those quite frequently) where you just couldn't look anywhere without seeing something cool! We had a whale "Trifecta" day where we saw a Minke Whale, Humpback Whale, and Orcas! It was incredible. We no sooner got done looking at our Humpback (which decided to surface literally three feet from our boat) and we had another whale to look at! I think our major problem today was...

As we left for our tour on the M/V Sea Lion, the sun was shinning bright and the breeze was warm. As we picked up though, the air turned cool and the waters of Cattle Pass were whirling around as the tidal exchange was creating up-welling zones. We were all preparing to see some great wildlife with the reports of many different whales. Before we got on seen with the whales we got to see what I refer to as "Harbor Seal soup" were all of the seals are in the water foraging and we have...

We left our Friday Harbor location today and headed south out the San Juan Channel, though Cattle Pass, and into the Haro Strait where we came across a Humpback Whale! This was the same Humpback that we saw last night right off the south end of San Juan Island. When we reached Hein Bank, the whale was heading toward Vancouver, BC. At first it was diving deep and staying down for about eight minutes at a time. Then, the whale seemed to have a change of pace and started swimming slowly...

It was a beautiful day to be on the water! We left Friday Harbor and headed south through Cattle Pass and into the Haro Strait where we hoped to encounter some whales. On our way out, we came across numerous Harbor Seals that were utilizing the the upwellings created by the tidal current. These upwellings are a great place for the Harbor Seals to forage and we love seeing their little heads bobbing up and down in the water!

When we got on scene with the whales Keven and I quickly...

Another beautiful day on the water. Leaving Friday Harbor Captain Mike, myself and our guests, once again traveled north along San Juan Island before reaching the west side of Henry Island where we met up with northbound traveling J pod as well as the small group from L pod, the L12s. Right away we saw one of my favorite group of whales from J pod, the "Cookie Clan" consisting of J22 (Oreo), J34 (Doublestuff), and J38 (cookie).
As the whales traveled right next to Henry island we...

After leaving our slip in Friday Harbor we were greeted with beautiful calm waters in San Juan Channel. Our destination today was north in to the Canadian waters hopefully to catch up with a Humpback whale spotted earlier in the day.
After a scenic ride north we entered the Strait of Georgia around East Point of Saturna Island where the Humpback was spotted just north of Tumbo Island. This whale was fairly non-directional possibly in a feeding behavior. This has been a excellent...

Seals basking on rock outcrops. A Minke whale in Griffin Bay. A Stellar sea lion wrestling with an OCTOPUS? Yes at Cattle Pass.  Harbor porpoise on the port side! The sea lion won. Then off to Hein Bank to view a Humpback whale. One single humpback lazily coming up for air, then a 5 minute dive - going to Victoria.

What a day.

We traveled 60 miles round trip today, and boy was it worth it!

We found 2 Humpback Whales outside of Victoria, British Columbia near Race Rocks (48°18.14N, 123°30.73W).  The whales would surface four or five times, their powerful exhales vaporizing the water over their blowholes into a 10ft high mist, and then dive raising their tail flukes out of the water.  Fortunately their deeper dives lasted only 4-5 minutes so we had several opportunities to view these majestic beasties.

W...

Man was today a day for whales in Haro Strait; we saw a Humpback Whale (48°29.81N 123°11.95W) and 6 Transient Orcas (48°27.21N 123°09.33W)!!!!  There was also rumor of transients north, where most of the whale watch fleeted ended up going, but our decision to go south and around San Juan turned for the better. There were hardly any other boats around and we got the bonus of seeing a Humpback! Now if I were you, I would choose the San Juan Safaris crew.

Let's take a little risk...

What an incredible sight last night south of Victoria.  Tangerine orange sunset and TWO humpbacks feeding in synchronization…they could have won a gold medal for synchronized swimming!  These massive baleen whales were lunging for schooling fish and plankton.  We could see their throat pleats stretch as they swallowed large quantities of food.  Small fish were leaping out of the water in attempts to escape.  Guests had incredible photos of flukes and flippers.  It was a 50 mile round...