Olivia Ellman | M/V Osprey | October 15th, 2026 | 1:30 pm
As we move further into the Fall season, we are enjoying so many beautiful sunny days full of wildlife. We left the harbor to head north, seeing some clear views of Mount Baker to the east but also some dense fog. As we made our way further north, we soon were surrounded by the fog and enjoyed the spooky October setting looking out at the San Juan Island shoreline as well as further obscured islands. We spotted our first bald eagle of the day flying through the fog, and then found some clearer conditions once again as we neared Spieden Island. We decided to head a bit east towards Waldron from here, checking out many adorable harbor seals at White Rock, a swimming Stellar Sea Lion, as well as another bald eagle. As we turned to go explore more of the boundary waters, we spotted a large exhalation near Waldron Island followed by a tail.. There was a humpback whale in the area! From the amount of bird activity around us, it wasn’t too surprising to find a baleen whale taking advantage of the fish abundance in the area. We waited for the whale to surface again from its dive, and soon enough saw another exhalation and a quick dive. As soon as we saw this whale’s tail, we recognized it as a juvenile known as “Greenie” (BCC0050) that has been hanging out in the area recently! Soon Greenie got into a pattern of taking short dives and circling the area, giving us amazing looks at the surface for much of our encounter. When it was time to start to leave the area, we got some last looks and continued west towards Stuart Island. Lucky for us, before even picking up speed we noticed another exhalation out ahead of us; another Humpback whale! We slowed down once again, and waited for this individual to surface. We quickly got to see a fluking dive, and noticed this tail looked quite different from our last humpback. While Greenie has an all black tail, this whale had a lot of white in the pattern. Based on this photo, we could ID this whale as BCY1552 who was first sighted in 2024 in Hawaii and has been seen all over the Salish Sea since then. It’s always exciting to be able to ID a whale, and even better when there are sighting records in a breeding and feeding ground! We got some incredible looks at this individual, before once again departing the area to search for any other wildlife on our way back south.
We took John’s Pass and explored New Channel before wrapping around into Spieden Channel. There were lots of animals out to see here, starting with more harbor seals and some Moufflon Sheep. We quickly noticed two more bald eagles, and lots more Moufflon and some Fallow Deer. There was a large buck standing among a group of female Fallow, and we saw him vocalizing as some Moufflon passed by. While we don’t have a lot of data on the animal populations on this privately owned island, it is always fascinating to see these species interactions. We saw yet another bald eagle on top of the tree with the large eagle nest in it, noticed a pair of some beautiful Harlequin Ducks swimming along the shoreline, and heard a Kingfisher as it flew along the shore as well. As we continued back to San Juan Channel, we saw more Moufflon out grazing to complete an incredibly diverse find of wildlife surrounding this island. We continued scanning along our way home, before reaching the dock once again in Friday Harbor.
Want 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/