Olivia Ellman | M/V Kestrel | May 31st, 2026 | 2:00 pm
You can never predict the days you get to see certain behaviors for the first time, and today was full of surprises from multiple species! When we left the dock, we had multiple reports of different whales in our area so we set out north to see what we could find today. We reached Spieden Island and decided to head around the northern side to expand the search range and look for any critters along the shoreline. We got to see a few beautiful bald eagles on treetops, and swimming harbor seals! We continued on around Spieden, and a few boats came into view that were with a group of Bigg’s Killer Whales! The whales were changing directions a bit as we made our approach, so we slowly took a wide approach to figure out their behaviors a bit. Once it was clear they were heading west of Battleship island, we followed along and got to see a bit closer looks at the familiar dorsal fins of the T123s and 124A4s. I have loved seeing these families travel together so much recently! The group of 7 seemed to be traveling slowly, when all of the sudden there was a burst of action at the surface! We saw flukes on their sides, and in the midst got a glimpse of a “sea snake”...! T123A Stanley is the only male in this grouping, so something made him extra excited for a moment, before they all continued their travels. Perhaps he was interested in T124A4, who could be ready to have another calf soon? Or was it something else? It seems like we’ll never know, because the group did not show any different behavior for the rest of our encounter.
We moved along from the Bigg’s further into the Haro Strait, because we had another report of some Humpback whales up ahead! It turned out there were three humpbacks traveling together, and at first we got some brief looks at their backs and then some nice fluking dives. They were down on one longer dive, when suddenly two of the whales exploded from the surface in a double breach!! It is pretty random to see breaching behavior from any whales, but especially rare in humpbacks as this was my first time seeing this in the Salish Sea after three years here! One of the individuals continued chin slapping multiple times, and then one rolled around at the surface and began pec slapping! And THEN, we got another full body breach from one of the whales!! This was incredibly exciting and lucky, as the whales then went back to fluking dives and travel. They were pointed in the direction of the killer whales we had left before, so I did wonder if this burst of activity had to do with the Bigg’s being in the area…
We left this amazing encounter and headed back towards Spieden to see more bald eagles feasting on the sea lion we’ve seen a lot of this week. For one final wildlife stop, we found a sea otter outside Friday Harbor. Another incredible wildlife adventure today!