With fall upon us, the end of our season is sight, although the whale sightings have still been great! We had to cancel Friday’s tour on account of stormy weather, and only ended up running two tours this week, both of which we encountered killer whales on.
On Saturday’s tour, we found ourselves heading down Saratoga passage, a route we don’t go all that often. Deep down Saratoga passage near the south end of Holmes Harbor, we met up with a group of orcas that included the T137 family in addition to T65A5 hanging out with them. Immediately upon coming on scene with these whales, we noticed they were quite surface active. From talking with the other whale watch captains already there, we were told they had just finished up a kill and were in the “post-lunch” celebratory stage. We stayed with these whales for some time and watched as they were quite happy. We got to see quite a bit of social, playful activity.
On Sunday’s tour, after receiving a report of some killer whales on the northwest side of the San Juan Archipelago we made our way through the heart of the San Juans and eventually crossed over into Canadian waters where we met up with the T019 family of orcas who were traveling through the Canadian Gulf Islands. It is always so cool to see this family of killer whales on a tour, the two males T019B “Galiano” and T019C “Spouter” are absolutely massive!
We’ve got 3 more tours on the schedule for the year next weekend and that will be it for our 2024 whale watching season. If you missed us this year, tours will begin March 29th, 2025!
