This continues to be an extraordinarily epic year for killer whale sightings. This week we saw orcas on all 11 trips. Year to date we have seen orcas on 150 out of 177 tours, a sighting rate for killer whales of 84.7 percent! I am very excited to see what the years to come are going to be like. Every year has been better than the last in terms of Bigg’s orca sightings. We also had some lovely humpback whale encounters this week, and a couple of nice minke whale encounters as well.
This week we had visits from the T037A, T049A, T075B, T099, and T060 families of killer whales.
Our encounter of the week came on Tuesday’s tour when we met up with the T037A, T075B, and T049A families of killer whales up in boundary pass near Waldron Island. Immediately upon coming on scene with these whales, we could see some splashing, and some clearly social behavior. For the next hour, we watched as these whales were having a great time. We saw lots of breaching, rolling around, some spyhops! It was an absolutely epic encounter, one of our best of the year.
We also had an incredible encounter with a couple of humpback whales, named “Scuttle” and “Valiant.” These two were traveling up Rosario strait on both of Sunday’s tours. They were making a lot of above water vocalizations, both trumpeting and grunting, which was wild to hear. They were also rolling around, and chin slapping, and fluking plenty. We love our humpbacks!
We hope to see you for some tours in the San Juan Islands soon! Let’s go find some whales!
