Lauren | M/V Kestrel | Sunday, May 17th | 2:00 PM
Today’s Adventure Whale Watch & Wildlife Tour was about as poetic as they come. The fan-favorite Bigg’s Killer Whale family the T123’s were found swimming near the islands that two of them were named after! The matriarch of the family T123 is named “Sidney” after Sidney Island. Sidney Island is a Canadian island located in northwest Haro Strait. T123’s youngest daughter T123D/Darcy, is named after D’Arcy Island (a small island right below Sidney).
The M/V Kestrel motored out of Friday Harbor and headed north in San Juan Channel. We made our way across the Haro Strait, and aimed for Hughes Passage. Hughes Passage is the waterway between Sidney and D’Arcy Islands. With Hughes in sight, we started seeing faint exhales and black dorsal fins in the distance. The T123’s is a family of four whales. Mom aka T123/Sidney was born in 1985 and travels with her three offspring. Her eldest T123A/Stanley is a 25-year-old male, T123C/Lucky is a 13-year-old female, and T123D/Darcy is a 7-year-old female. We watched as these four whales headed north in Haro Strait. At one point this group of four split into two groups of two. Mama and Lucky were hanging together, while Stanley and Darcy headed off on an adventure. We watched as this sibling duo circled a crab pot. We watched as they dragged the pot underneath the surface of the water. They would wait for the buoy to float to the surface, then would drag it back down again. This is not an unusual behavior for Bigg’s Killer Whales, as may individuals in the population have been known to play with crab pots. What was unusual, at least for me, was to witness a female playing with it. Every time I have encountered a killer whale playing with a crab pot it has been a male! Perhaps big brother Stanley was trying to teach little sis how to play like one of the boys.
We slowly motored away from these whales to cruise by Mandarte Island. Mandarte has an impressive sea-bird colony. We viewed several glaucous-winged gulls, pelagic and double-crested cormorants as well as pigeon guillemots. We did a circumnavigation of Mandarte before heading back to the T123’s. As we got back on scene, the whales made a direction change and went on a dive. Unsure where they would pop up next, we turned our engines off to scan around the boat. A few moments later we heard a loud exhalation and witnessed as T123D/Darcy surfaced off the port side of our vessel!
We waved goodbye to the T123’s and headed for Spieden Channel. We got great looks at some harbor seals on Sentinel Rock, then buzzed over to Green Point to look at some much larger pinnipeds. We viewed several Steller Sea Lions hanging out at the point then headed for home. What a truly iconic day to be on the water!