Abby | M/V Kestrel | May 9th, 2026 | 2:00pm
Yet again, a beautiful day to get on the water! I will never get tired of saying that. We left Friday Harbor with calm seas and blue skies. There were already a few reports in the area, and it is just a matter of choosing the best way to go. Our first stop was Turn Rock, where there was a report of a sea otter! Sure enough, there it was, floating like a log on the edge of a kelp forest. This was my first sea otter spotting of the season! It is not often we get reports of sea otters, so when there is one, we are going to try to find it! After getting some precious looks, we headed north in San Juan Channel. We were headed towards a report of Bigg's Killer Whales that were towards the Canadian Gulf Islands, so we had a long trip ahead of us. As we approached Turn Point Lighthouse on Stuart Island (the northwestern-most in the continental US), we heard from another boat that there was a new sighting of a group of killer whales! So, our plans changed and we headed in the exact opposite direction of where we were originally headed! This new group of whales was much closer in our range, close to Waldron Island, so we made the decision to change plans. Our network is vast here and we are constantly talking to other boats that are also a part of the Pacific Whale Watching Association and today was a great example of that! The boat that had first spotted them today identified them as the T049A's, another group of Bigg's Killer Whales.
- T049A/Nan — female, born in 1986
- T049A3/Nat — male, born in 2011
- T049A4/Neptune — male, born in 2014
- T049A5/Nebula — female, born in 2017
- T049A6/Charlie II — male, born in 2022
- T049A7*/Nimbus — born in 2026
This family is quickly becoming one of my favorites! Especially getting great views of a range of individuals, from Nat the teenage boy, to Nimbus the new calf. We had wonderful looks of this family, probably some of our best looks yet! We spent our trip today keeping our heads on swivels and always looking around. Today they were popping up way in front of us, or suddenly on the other side. It is always exciting and interactive when this happens. We were practicing the whale shuffle multiple times today! We stayed with this family from the shores of Waldron Island to the southeastern point of Spieden Island, known as Green Point. Usually, Green Point has many Steller's Sea Lions hauled out, but today there were only two, but many rafted up in the water. We thought this group of killer whales would start hunting one of the Steller's, but not that we could see during our time with them. Eventually it came to be time for us to peel away and head back towards Friday Harbor. Today was an EPIC trip and I can't wait to see what the rest of this summer has in store with viewing this family!
Wanting to see more photos from our trips? Visit our SmugMug page at:https://sanjuansafaris.smugmug.com/
More information about the Pacific Whale Watch Association: https://www.pacificwhalewatchassociation.com/