It’s feeling more and more like summer with the influx of unique individual humpbacks arriving and with some warming temperatures in our area (couple days with highs in the mid 80s this week!). Here’s this week’s recap of whale sightings from June 2nd to June 8th:
Within this time frame, guests spent time with several different family groups of Bigg’s killer whales: the T34 & T37 matrilines, two members of the T38s, T36/36Bs, T46Bs, T65As, T75Bs, the T123s, T124A2s, T124Ds, and the T137s – roughly 48 different individuals spread across our tours!
This week we came across a couple new mother and calf humpback pairs! While Big Mama and her 2025 calf continue to cruise around the Gulf Islands, Outer Islands, and President’s Channel (near the west side of Orcas Island), Zig Zag and her 2025 calf were first sighted in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, then found themselves near Hein Bank with a couple friends for a few days, and motored to the south of the San Juan/Lopez Island areas. Olympus was also new to the party with her 2025 calf. We LOVE watching humpback calf antics and were gifted an amazing sighting of Zig Zag’s calf mimicking lunge feeding–something our crew onboard that trip had not personally seen before.
My favorite encounter this week had to be coming on scene to find four family groups spread out over a couple of miles and enjoying some social time. The T75Bs, T124A2s, T124Ds, and T137s were in our direct vicinity, with others a mile+ off, but seeing some of the younger ones rolling around, tail lobbing and slapping, and creating some general mischief while some of the adults were trying to rest is one of my favorite occurrences.
As always, we’ve cherished these small glimpses into the lives of these whales and are excited to see what this next week will bring us!
