Olivia Ellman | M/V Osprey | June 1st, 2025 | 12:30 pm
Our first trip of the month set the standards high for June! We left Friday Harbor on our Classic Whale Watch today heading east along the ferry route. The interisland cruise gave us lots of opportunities to look close along the shorelines and spot for wildlife. We continued east for some time until we reached Rosario Strait and could see Anacortes in the distance. Soon enough, we saw a number of black dorsal fins at the surface in two different directions, which turned out to be two different Bigg’s Killer Whale matrilines! We chose to head towards the larger group, and soon caught up to one of our favorite families the T137s! The group was traveling a bit sporadically, but quickly began to pick up speed and head towards the shore of Cypress Island. We noticed a lot of birds on the surface of the water, and were excited to see the whales travel that way and begin to hunt! We saw a number of splashes at the surfaces, and even saw a spyhop as one of them poked their head up out of the water. The group disappeared on a longer down time, and surprised us when they surfaced heading in our direction and swam right behind us! As they passed by, we got incredible looks at them under the water and even saw one of them carrying their prey along the way. Once they got further away, we turned our engines back on and followed along for a few more minutes before it was time to wave goodbye.
As we were making our way out of Rosario Strait, we got a few bonus looks of the other two Bigg’s Killer Whales that we had seen earlier in the distance. When we were far away enough from both groups, we picked up speed to begin traveling back to Friday Harbor. Luck was definitely on our side today, and hopefully is a good sign for everything to come this month!