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Whales, Whales, and More Whales! An Unforgettable Day in the Salish Sea

pc: Olivia Ellman, San Juan Safaris

Olivia Ellman | M/V Kestrel | July 11th, 2025 | 2:00 PM

Captain Brian and I knew it was going to be an epic day on the water, but we couldn’t have predicted the trip we had! There were many different whale sightings in the region, so when we left the harbor we were excited to head towards some of those reports. We began traveling south, hoping to catch up to a report of two killer whales heading towards Salmon Bank. We zoomed through Cattle Pass and continued into the more open water, with amazing views of Mount Rainier, the Olympic Mountains, and Mount Baker. Eventually we reached another boat that was watching the whales, which ended up being the iconic T63 Chainsaw and his mom T65 Whidbey II! The pair was spread out in the area, so we alternated getting looks at each individual. We always love seeing Chainsaw and his jagged dorsal fin, and it was nice to catch up after not seeing him for a little while. We decided to leave Chainsaw and his mom after a bit so we could go check out some of the other sightings we were hearing about, so we slowly moved away from them and began traveling north into the Haro Strait. 

There was a report of another family of Bigg’s Killer Whales near Sidney that we were hoping to catch up with, as well as a possible Humpback near Lime Kiln on San Juan Island, so we were scanning in all directions as we traveled through the choppier channel. As we were nearing the area where we were hoping to maybe find the humpback in the distance, a passenger at the stern spotted some dorsal fins and exhalations further off our port side! Captain Brian and I quickly got eyes on these dorsals, recognizing them as killer whales but waiting to determine if they were Bigg’s or Residents. As we slowed our vessel and got some better looks at the whales surfacing, we determined this to be another Bigg’s Killer Whale family and approached to our distance limits. I was very excited to be the first ones on scene with these whales since it gave us a great opportunity to attempt to ID them! There was one very large male and 3 or 4 others, and they were slowly zig zagging through the area. We assumed these whales were resting based on their behavior, which allowed us to get some great looks at their dorsals to try to identify them. I had a couple guesses on matrilines based on the number of individuals and families I had seen recently, but once I finally got a good look at one female with a distinct razor like top of her dorsal fin, I was pretty set on assuming this was the T99s! I’ve luckily seen this family recently, and T99B Holly has a unique dorsal fin among the rest of her family. We reported our findings to other vessels in our network, and soon decided to once again leave the whales behind and continue our travels.

We didn’t have to go much further north until we saw even more whales in the distance towards Stuart Island! This was another exciting moment as we knew this was the famous humpback Big Mama and her newest calf! I have loved getting to see this pair over the last months and seeing where they pop up each week. It was great to compare the two species, and also so fun to see the calf hanging out at the surface. After some amazing looks at a few fluking dives, we were officially out of time and had to travel back towards Friday Harbor. It's not everyday we get to see two different species of whales, especially different iconic individuals, or find whales that no one else has been with yet, so this was definitely an unforgettable day on the water.

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