Welcome to the Whale Report Blog

Who would think that a heat wave would hit Friday Harbor?  It has though and while this is not one of those melt-your-shoes-to-the-sidewalk kind of heat waves, it has had an affect on life here.  For one thing, there is no such thing as air conditioning on San Juan Island.  Maybe not in the whole of the Pacific Northwest, I am not sure.  Next, everything is in rapid bloom mode.  Flowers are practically faded before they can even escape the confines of their sepals.  Lastly, it makes...

With the sun shining strong today, the only place I wanted to be was out on the water. We walked off the heated sidewalks of Friday Harbor and made ourselves comfortable on the deck of the SeaLion. The warm breeze made for a very enjoyable ride.  Captain Mike informed the crew that we were heading to the west side of San Juan Island to look for our infamous Resident orca whales. Well, we didn't have to look very hard!  We spotted "Cappuccino" traveling widely spread out from the...

Naturalist Sallly with Whale Watching Guests aboard MV Sea Lion

SuperPod. That got my attention. I got into gear and called staffer Ellie to see if she would watch the office. I am out of here!
Needlesstosay, I had a wonderful three hour mini vacation on my own boat with an unbeatable crew.

Here are some not-so-professional photos of the 3 hours

Whale Watching Guests Photographing

Haying on San Juan Island

Ok. So the hay is not from the whale watching tour. But this is what...

This morning I awoke to my phone ringing at 9am. It was the Interpretive Specialist at Lime Kiln State Park- a superpod was right off of Lime Kiln. Last night, on the way home from our sunset tour, Captain Craig predicted we would have a superpod because he heard from the Canadians that 50 orcas were headed this way from Victoria. On our sunset tour, we had followed Ruffles and Granny of J Pod as they headed south down the west side of San Juan Island (Victoria is only 9 miles away...

The day after fourth of July, all was sunny. There were reports of orcas at Point Roberts, just south of the northern border that we share with Canada. It would take us an hour and a half to get there, so you can imagine our relief when we received word of a pod closer- at East Point on Saturna Island to be exact.

The trip sped by as I talked to customers and attended to people's needs. Before I knew it, I looked out the port window and the east of San Juan island had already passed...

There is certainly a lot of excitement on the water today, from a variety of boats and yachts to BBQs on the shore, but most importantly..the orcas whales!  We headed to the west side of San Juan Island today to oo and awe in the presence of our resident J-pod orcas.  We spotted the orcas off every direction of the boat.  Not to mention that two bald eagles were flying above us.  The orcas were spread out from each other, occasionally joining with a family member to travel in a small...

What a great start to the holiday weekend with this beautiful day! We traveled north to meet the whales traveling down the west side of San Juan Island. The nice weather and holiday brought out many boaters who were also excited to observe the Orcas.  The Orcas are an endangered species so there are many laws and regulations about boat behavior around them. Soundwatch is local non profit organization that provides boater education to recreational vessels and monitors commercial...

We met up with members of the Southern Resident Orca Community off the south end of Lopez Island today. I was immediately able to identify Raggedy (or K40). She is easily identifiable because of her "raggedy" dorsal fin. The orcas appeared to be fishing. They were very spread out, traveling in no particular direction, and taking longer dives than usual. We traveled with the animals as the headed toward Cape San Juan. Some of the orcas were traveling in a tight-knit group off the...

Even though the day started out with some drizzle and clouds it wound up being another glassy calm day on the water. Fortunately the drizzle stopped shortly after we left the dock and we made our way over to the west side of San Juan Island where the Orcas were reported to be. We traveled south along the island watching the whales calmly move along. They were in no rush as they occasional changed direction and milled about. Their slow pace offered some wonderful views of these...

The water looked like glass tonight as we headed out of Friday Harbor in search of the Orcas. Earlier on the afternoon trip we observed K pod just outside of Cattle pass slowly traveling north on the west side of San Juan Island but this evening there were new reports of whales even closer by. We quickly caught up to them as they traveled along Stuart Island. After only a moment of observing this pod I saw that familiar wavy dorsal fin pop up and knew we were in the presence of J-pod...