Olivia Ellman | M/V Kestrel | July 4th, 2025 | 10:00 am
Every morning we start our search for whales all over again, so our morning trips are especially adventurous as we are one of the first boats to leave the harbor. When we left this morning, we expected to be joining the search, but were surprised to hear from other boats that a few groups of whales had already been spotted! Since it was still early and these sightings were further to the east, we decided to head straight over to maximize our chances of finding them. We zoomed interisland, stopping briefly to view a bald eagle nest, until reaching Rosario Strait. We then continued across this bigger channel until nearing Bellingham Bay, where we soon caught up with a few other boats in the area that had reported the whales. We quickly started seeing a few dorsal fins in the distance, and slowly approached the scene to view this family of Bigg’s Killer Whales. This family of 6 turned out to be the familiar T36s, so it was great to catch up with T36 Flapjack and her daughter T36B Tattertip’s adorable family. We watched the group slowly travel north towards Bellingham Bay, and after some time we decided to slowly leave the area. Another group of Bigg’s had been picked up a little south of us, so we figured we would go check out this other family. After a short transit towards Padilla Bay, we soon got on scene with a family of 5, the T99s! I was very excited this family was here since they are actually relatives of the T36s, where T99 is another daughter of T36. It was great to see the 16 year old male T99C Barakat standing out among his family with his tall dorsal fin. We got beautiful looks at this family as they traveled tightly along the shoreline, but Barakat was a bit offshore closer to us so we got great looks at him especially. After spending a while watching them, we soon enough had to begin our journey back to San Juan Island. This morning was such a fun surprise getting to see two different families (cousins!), and we felt very lucky that we got to spend so much time with these whales for the 4th of July.