Olivia Ellman | M/V Kestrel | Tuesday August 5th 2025 | 2:00 pm
When we left on our afternoon tour, we weren’t quite sure that we would be able to reach the whale reports. While every hour is different on the water and there’s always a chance of finding whales on our own, we were still hoping to catch up with one of the reports that other boats were updating us on. We left the harbor and headed south towards the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and pointed towards a report of Bigg’s Killer Whales that were near Whidbey Island. By the time we reached Cattle Pass, all of the boats with the whales were departing so we decided to take a chance and zoom south to try to reacquire them. After a quick look at some Stellar’s Sea Lions at Whale Rocks, we picked up speed and cruised for at least an hour. It was a long trek, but finally we reached the area they were last seen and began to scan. The one other boat in the area with us quickly radioed that they had spotted the group, so the trek was officially worth it! We caught up to the group and began to see a number of dorsal fins in the distance. The original report had identified this as 7 to 8 members of the T36s, including members of the 36As and 36Bs. The whales were quite spread out, and as we began looking around it began apparent that there were definitely other matrilines present as we spotted one larger male in the area and know that the 36s don’t have any older males. We decided to go get some looks at a group of four females that were traveling together, and one of them had a very distinct and familiar dorsal… I grabbed our photo ID book and confirmed that the T99s were with us, thanks to T99B Holly’s dorsal fin, and assumed that the big male in the distance was her brother T99C Barakat! I was so excited to be seeing this family again after they hadn’t been in the area for a few weeks, and also wasn’t too surprised it was them as they are relatives of the T36s (T36 Flapjack is also the mom of T99 Bella!). We followed along with four of the 99s, but all the whales were picking up speed heading north towards Port Townsend and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was hard to keep track of which group was which from a distance, and soon we found ourselves around a few of the 36s. We got an amazing closer pass from what looked like four of the 36As, including 36A1 Tierna and her 2022 calf Drift. After they passed behind us, we began to slowly move out of the area. Since there were at least 12 individuals around, we continued spotting dorsals as we moved away. Captain Brian and I could not believe the lucky day we had today, and even when we drove through a bit of rain on the way back, nothing could lower the spirits on board!