Aly Liu | M/V Osprey | Sunday, July 19, 2026 | 12:30 pm
On today’s classic tour aboard M/V Osprey, we received reports of a rather uncommon scene here in the Salish Sea; four humpback whales were spotted in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, widely known as a “whale highway” connecting the greater Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea. The San Juans are primarily a summer snacking ground for these baleen whales amidst a nearly 3000 mile migration, so social aggregations are quite rare. We headed south down San Juan Channel to make our way towards these reports, finding two species of marine mammal on the way: Harbor porpoise and Harbor seal.
After crossing Haro Strait and transiting between Vancouver Island and the Olympic Coast, we raised our Whale Warning Flag at the stern of Osprey, as we were approaching three humpback whales. The fourth whale must have dispersed as we approached the scene, while the remaining three animals surfaced frequently, making us earn a few gorgeous views of their flukes towards the end of our time together. With photos of the unique markings and colorations of those tails, we worked on correlating those shots with a photo-ID bank and identified one individual as BCX2481, a humpback first seen in 2023 in Baja, Mexico.
We had already departed the scene to look for other wildlife, when Captain Gabe spun the boat around and announced that the whales had suddenly decided it was party time. Humpback whales have one of the largest appendage-to-body-length ratios of any animal (those pectoral fins are ⅓ the length of the body!), and we were fortunate enough to see a series of what we call “pec slaps.” After turning to one side at the surface, these whales raised their long angel-like wings at a 90 degree angle to the water before slamming those appendages down on the surface, creating a thunderous noise that echoed across the ocean. A truly spectacular and relatively rare sight. We closed the tour with 2400 pound Steller sea lions at Whale Rocks off Cattle Point on San Juan Island.
Thanks Captain Gabe from your crew and passengers for a whale of a time.
Want more information about the Pacific Whale Watch Association? See https://www.pacificwhalewatchassociation.com/
Want to see more photos from our trips? Visit our SmugMug page at: https://sanjuansafaris.smugmug.com/