Olivia Ellman | M/V Kestrel | May 30th, 2026 | 2:00 pm
Before departing today we had a plan to follow up on some reports of a few baleen whales in Rosario Strait, and join the search for any killer whales in our region. This plan quickly changed on our way out of the harbor when we got a report of killer whales in the northern San Juan Islands! We headed north, scanning among the islands on our way up San Juan Channel, and stopping at White Rock when we saw many harbor seals. It was such a low tide that the seals were covering the shoreline and even sitting in the water on submerged rocks. Some of them even looked like logs floating in the water! We enjoyed some time here with our engines off, sitting the beautiful glassy water and listening to the bird activity. There were two bald eagles sitting on top of the island as well, so that was another great sighting already checked off our list! Soon enough we made our way back towards President’s Channel, and continued north towards Sucia and Patos.
We zoomed past Sucia and made it closer towards the Strait of Georgia when we saw dorsal fins and exhalations in the distance. Bigg’s Killer Whales were traveling up ahead! This group of 7 individuals was photo identified as the T123s and T124A4s, two different matrilines that we have seen traveling together a few times recently. They seemed to be making their way north east, but would make interesting direction changes between dives sometimes. As we were watching them, we suddenly noticed a much larger exhalation in the distance of a baleen whale! Based on the exhalation, we suspected a grey whale and confirmed this when we saw its back at the surface before going on a dive. We quickly noticed another individual also in the area.. My first gray whales of the season! The killer whales were still surfacing near the one gray whale, and we were eager to see what kind of interaction might happen. We don’t typically see killer whales predating on larger baleen species in this area, but they were definitely checking this whale out. I would’ve loved to see what was happening beneath the surface here! The gray whale rolled at the surface a few times, which we noticed by seeing the side of the fluke poking out of the water. Was this a defensive move? We waited for the killer whales to come up again, and the next surfacing they were further away and seemed to have moved on from the gray whale. At this point, we had to also begin to move on, so who knows what was really happening between these two species!
We got to see some harbor porpoise on our travels back towards the harbor, and got some surprisingly good looks at them coming out of the water. Usually harbor porpoise are very sneaky and fast moving, so this was another fun surprise of the day. Hopefully I will see some killer whale/gray whale interaction again some day, but for now it will remain a mystery if they are friends or foes.