Lauren Tschirhart | July 2nd, 2026 | M/V Kestrel | 2:00 pm
Today was feeling more like January than July. It was cold, and it was rainy but the wildlife made our wet and wild journey beyond worth it. We saw so many cool things on our tour today! Our trip began by departing Friday Harbor and cruising south towards Cattle Pass. We stopped at Whale Rocks to observe a large group of Steller Sea Lions before continuing southeast around the bottom of Lopez Island. Next we slowed down to view a humpback whale that was ID’d as BCX1800/ Gretzky. We got amazing looks at this individual as it was regularly bringing its tail fluke out of the water before going on its deeper dives. It’s not often that we have two species of cetacean found super close to one another, but today was the exception. As we were watching this humpback, we could see other Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA) vessels in the distance. Those boats were on scene with a group of Bigg’s Killer Whales known as the T065B’s. The T065B’s is made up of a mom and her three sons. Their designations are as follows:
- T065B/Chunk — female, born in 1993
- T065B1/Birdsall — male, born in 2011
- T065B2/Nettle/Corvis — male, born in 2019
- T065B3/Rook — male, born in 2023
After hanging out with these four orcas, we departed the scene and headed over to Smith Island. Smith is locally famous for being the only nesting sight for Tufted Puffins in the interislands of the San Juans. We cruised by the Smith Island shoreline and got a glimpse of several puffins, and also observed a sea otter floating in a kelpbed nearby. This was my first Tufted Puffin sighting of the year so I was stoked! What a wonderful day full of whales and wildlife!