Olivia Esqueda | April 21st, 2025 | M/V Osprey | 2:00pm
What a fun day out on the water with Bigg’s Killer Whales! We headed north through San Juan Channel until we reached the area where San Juan Channel and Spieden Island meet. This is where we first spotted the T065B’s milling around the lush, nutrient filled waters. T065B [Chunk, female born in 1993] is a marine mammal eating orca traveling around with her three calves, T065B1 [Birdsall, male born in 2011], T065B2 [Nettle/Corvis, born in 2019], and T065B3 [Rook, male born in 2023]. This is a matriline we see often in the San Juan Islands, and are always excited when they return. They decided to slip into Spieden Channel and hang out near the pink and green coastline, when all of a sudden they went into hunting mode. Working together, they snagged a Harbor Seal off the shoreline and the young calves practiced their life skills while mom observed not too far away. This made for an exciting teaching moment in the field! Not too far away, we were able to watch many Mouflon Sheep and Fallow Deer running and foraging along the hillside, Bald Eagles soaring in the sky, and bellowing Steller’s Sea Lions thermoregulating on the shoreline and in the bull kelp just off Green Point. Between the wildlife, conservation education, sunny skies, and calm waters, this led to one memorable day in the Salish Sea.