Lauren Tschirhart | July 16th, 2026 | M/V Kestrel | 11:00 am
We have a new tour offering here at San Juan Safaris’s. We are now running full day whale watching excursions. Instead of our normal 3 to 4 hour tour, we are now offering an extended 5 to 6 hour adventure. Today was our very first all day tour of the season, and although the weather was not on our side, the whales definitely were. Not only were there thunderstorms in the forecast, which is something extremely rare here in the Salish Sea, but we had gnarly winds coming from both the north and southwest. Lucky for us, there were several groups of whales spotted in the interislands, so we didn’t have to brave any of those rough seas. First on the agenda was to try and catch up with a report of 10 Bigg’s Killer Whales in Rosario Strait. We headed north in San Juan Channel and cruised west through Wasp Passage and Cayou Channel. We made our way south into Lopez Sound and then cruised into Rosario Strait.
As we made our way on scene, we got word from another captain that this group of 10 orcas had been observed hunting. After further observation, it seemed like these whales may have just been training or playing and not actually hunting. Apparently they had gone after a sea lion, but they did not end up consuming it. They left the poor thing incapacitated and moved on. Sometimes we see this behavior when they are training young whales to hunt. The youngest in this group was T037B3/ Slice, a four-year-old female. Was this just a practice round for little T037B3/ Slice? Hard to say for certain, but it sure is fun to speculate.
The whales present in this group were members of the T037A’s, and all of the T037B’s and T123’s. We watched as these families socialized with one another. We observed a lot of playful behavior, especially from T037B3/ Slice who was seen doing headstand after headstand and was seemingly hitting 26-year-old T123A/ Stanley right in the face! It was quite funny to watch. The best part of our day was getting the opportunity to see a bunch of big boy breaches! We were pretty sure the whale breaching was T123A/ Stanley, but from our angle, we couldn’t get a good look at the dorsal fin. Regardless, we were absolutely thrilled to witness this behavior. Seeing a large male Bigg’s Killer Whale jump out of the water is a pretty rare experience! Watching an animal propel its 10,000 pound body clear out of the water is a feeling I cannot even begin to describe. We were buzzing with excitement!
We got word that our sister vessel, the M/V Osprey, was on scene with a different group of killer whales who had just been observed swimming right through Friday Harbor Marina! We waved goodbye to our whale friends and took an interisland cruise back west. These whales were identified as a family of Bigg’s Killer Whales known as the T109A’s. The T109A’s is made up of matriarch T109A/Frio and five off her offspring. As these whales made their way north in San Juan Channel, the wind and rain began to pick up rapidly so we decided to head over to Orcas Island to seek shelter. We docked the M/V Kestrel and strolled over to The Orcas Hotel for some warm soup and lattes. After warming up, we braved the seas one last time and made our way back to Friday Harbor. It was cold, and it was wet, but the wildlife showed up for us in a big way. Seeing surface behavior from these stealthy marine mammal eating orcas made our journey well worth it.