Aly Liu | May 27th, 2026 | M/V Sea Lion | 12:30 pm
Today, we departed Friday Harbor with a boat packed to the brim and hearts full of anticipation for the awesome afternoon ahead. We began our long journey north through San Juan Channel and President’s Channel with spectacular looks of Mt. Constitution and Turtleback Mountain on Orcas. Koma Kulshan, also known as Mount Baker, was as stunning as ever in the distance.
As we cruised northwest towards the boundary waters between Patos Island and Saturna Island, we were officially welcomed to Canada by not one, but two families of Bigg’s killer whales! Strong winds and tides created quite rocky conditions and large waves, making it difficult to identify our whales…until our “steller” naturalist Lauren captured some identifying photographs of the dorsal fins. We said hello to the T123s (T123 “Sidney,” T123A “Stanley,” T123C “Lucky,” and T123D “Darsey”) as well as the T124A4s (T124A4 “Sabio,” T124A4A “Strix,” T124A1A “Sabine”).
We witnessed a truly heartwarming scene of these two families playfully porpoising through the waves together; the two families may have been socializing, but we would like to believe that they were simply all having a blast surfing in the waves.
To conclude the already fantastic day, we stopped at the south side of Spieden Island, where we spotted several Mouflon sheep, who were originally imported to the island from the French island of Corsica. Finally, several adult bald eagles bid us a goodbye and wished us a safe return back to Friday Harbor!
Want more information about the Pacific Whale Watch Association? See https://www.pacificwhalewatchassociation.com/
Want to see more photos from our trips? Visit our SmugMug page at: https://sanjuansafaris.smugmug.com/