Lauren | M/V Kestrel | Saturday, June 28th, 2025 | 2:00 pm
Today we were spoiled for choice. Before even leaving the dock we knew of at least four different groups of Bigg’s Killer Whales within our range. They were spread out, each group in a different waterway, but all at an achievable distance. We don’t often have such an abundance of choices, it was hard to choose where to go. Well not too hard… Our first stop was an obvious choice, as the T123’s were found right outside of Friday Harbor in San Juan Channel. We were literally watching whales within the fist five minutes of the tour! As we got on scene, we noticed T123/Sidney, T123C/Lucky and T12D/Darcy all traveling together, with T123A/Stanley curiously absent. Suddenly, back at our 7 o’clock we saw Stanleys huge dorsal fin coming out of the water like a massive black sail, allowing for brilliant looks at this impressive 25-year-old male. We stayed with this family for several surfacings, but decided to continue on towards another whale sighting. We headed northwest aiming for North Pender Island to follow up on a report of five Bigg’s Killer Whales. This group was made of up a family of four whales, known as the T065Bs who were also traveling with T049A1/Noah.
The matriarch of this young family is a 32-year-old female named T065B/Chunk. T049A1/Noah is a 24 year-old male who usually travels by his lonesome, occasionally linking up with other whales. Did Noah have his eyes on Chunk? Were we witnessing a courting attempt? With T065B3/Rook being two years of age, it would be a little early for Chunk to become pregnant again, but far from impossible. Killer whales calve on average every 3 to 5 years and can continue having calves until they are in their late 40s to early 50s. Females will then actually transition into menopause. Those females may live 40+ years after they can no longer reproduce! We did not see any mating behavior between these two, but it’s always fun to speculate why certain whales may be traveling together. We got some bonus time with these five whales as we were waiting for another Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA) vessel to arrive. After we departed Swanson Channel, we went north into Shingle Bay and made our way around Pender Island through Navy Channel and eventually into Plumper Sound. After our circumnavigation of Pender Island, we made our way back south through Boundary Pass, and observed several harbor porpoise en route to Friday Harbor.