Here is our weekly wildlife sightings recap from our tours for the week of May 26th – June 1st:
This is one of our favorite times of the year–that mark where we are straddling spring and summer. Days are getting longer and warmer (on MOST days!), and the whales and wildlife are between their comings and goings, making every day a truly unique experience on the water.
Bigg’s killer whales were encountered on almost all of our tours this past week. There have been two interesting groups of orcas, each consisting of two separate matrilines, that have been spending some extended social time with one another. They have also been occupying the waters around the San Juan Islands, the Gulf Islands (BC), and the water between those areas and Puget Sound with a lot of frequency, and so those two groups were the most encountered over our span of tours for this past week. They consisted of the T64Bs (3) traveling with all or most of the T65As (6), and the T123s (4) traveling with the T124A4s (3). We also encountered T117A and his sister T117B with her offspring T117B1, and they were traveling with T172. This made for 20 different individuals across our tours.
Humpback whales are definitely moving through the Salish Sea right now! We are still awaiting the first mother-calf pair (they’re usually the last to leave the breeding/calving grounds), but it could be any day now! Our tours encountered BCZ0298 “Split Fin” traveling with BCX1675 “Strike,” BCZ0573 “Galaxia” traveling with BCY1300 “Allusion,” a trio consisting of BCx2064 (unnamed), CRC-20821 (2022 calf of Kappa, currently unnamed), and BCY1274 “Seltzer,” as well as a couple singular humpbacks that we were unable to identify (no fluking while we were on scene).
Some gray whales have still been spotted on tours, most notably around the southeastern area of the San Juan Islands. It’s becoming a little late in the season, but in the past few years they have kept a presence a little later, too. We’ll see how long some of these individuals continue their feeding here before potentially moving on to feeding grounds north of the Aleutian Islands!
A few other notable, but uncommon, species on tours this week: a sea otter was spotted near Whale Rocks (San Juan Island area) doing a bit of grooming in the kelp beds; there have been some BIG eggyolk jellies floating along in the currents and tides, as well as some ochre sea stars that have been visible at low tide; a brown pelican was perched along some driftwood at the end of Minor Island amongst LOTS of cormorants; a few tufted puffins and our first-of-year Heermann’s gulls (early arrivals!) were seen out off the waters of Smith Island. When whale sightings take us in that direction, we also stop to scan for those cute little seabirds. A rare, but awesome, treat. And though not necessarily “rare,” California sea lions are not as common around the San Juan Islands, but we spotted one along a typical Steller sea lion haul out site and enjoyed comparing his size difference (smaller) than those nearby Stellers (bigger–sometimes by a LOT).
We’re looking forward to seeing what the next week brings us on the wildlife front! Hope you can join us!
