Monday July 21st

West Side J’s

I love it when we are the first boat on scene in the morning. 9am trips are bloody great! The Orca Spirit headed across to the west side of San Juan Island in the search for the resident orcas, and sure enough, just south of Lime Kiln Lighthouse we could see some blows and black dorsal fins. It was J pod, and they were foraging. We can tell when orcas are foraging based on their erratic movements and the fact that they are travelling in no specific direction. We saw some fast swimming and splashes by a sprouter male (J26 aka Blackberry, 17yrs) and it looked like he had gotten himself a salmon. We saw the big guy J1 (aka Ruffles, ~55 years old) swim past and he too appeared to be foraging. It’s good to know that there are still some salmon around for these endangered animals. Passengers were thrilled to be able to see these fish-eating killer whales actually eating fish. A great trip, who knows what the afternoon will bring.

The Pacific Explorer with a full boat and crew headed east this afternoon back to San Juan Island to see the wonder that is J pod. As we arrived on scene just north of Eagle Point we noticed a couple of large males swimming around, that again appeared to be foraging. As we got about 150m from these almost 6ft tall dorsal fins we noticed one of the males was in fact L57 (aka Faith, 31yrs). L57 has often been travelling with J-pod this year, as he has no immediate family members left in L pod. Either that or he’s here to impress the J females! We shut down our engines to watch these guys forage and then all of a sudden Faith was quite close to us, swimming around erratically. He was clearly hunting a salmon. He then stopped, and just watched us from under the surface of the water. Definitely some ‘people watching’ going on by this spectacular male orca. Passengers were over the moon that they too were being watched, and it made for a fantastic afternoon trip. The beauty of whale watching is that we are watching wild animals, and no trip is ever the same, and who knows what these charismatic megafauna are going to do next. Stay tuned folks for more blogs from Orca Spirit!

Below are some ‘whale watching’ photos from the trip today, and check out one of our zodiac drivers Cheri giving their passengers a fun ride!