The summer sure feels like it’s chugging along as another week has flown right by! This past week we were extremely delighted to have some “familiar fins” make their way back into the central Salish Sea, some of which spent at least a day or two with us before heading back out west to the Pacific Ocean. Having a diverse group of whales in our range gave guests a wonderful opportunity to spend some time with these whales as they went about their day-to-day lives, traveling, resting, and sometimes delighting those onboard by actively hunting and eating. ALL of our morning and afternoon trips got to spend time with killer whales this week, making things feel a lot more “normal” for this time of year than the last couple weeks have been.
Bigg’s killer whale families that were in our area this week, and that we personally encountered on our trips were: the T19s (3), T36A1s (2), T36/36Bs (6), T37As (3), T37A1 (she does not often travel with her own family group, so it was nice to see her in the mix on one of our T37A encounters), T46s (4), T65As (5, no A5 per usual), T65Bs (4), T75Cs (2), T99s (5), T101s (3), T109As (6) = putting us UP on the number of individuals versus last week, at 44 different orcas. With harbor seal pup-weening season almost upon us, we may continue to see numbers like this as Bigg’s killer whales (marine-mammal eaters) know when this shift happens in our area and often come in more frequently to patrol for some easier pickings (sorry, I know it sounds rough, but, circle of life. Everyone has to eat).
A “first” for myself and Captain Austin this past week was encountering a large social group of Bigg’s killer whales that consisted of 6 different family groups. A couple of them seemed to be very fired up about their experience with T37A4 “Crinkle” taking to the skies multiple times (see photo below). I told the group that got to witness this event to go buy lottery tickets–I’ve been out on the Salish Sea for the better part of 8 years and this was my first time to see a spectacle as such. Our hope is that some of these families decide to keep coming around to forage for the remained of the summer!
We still continued to see humpbacks and Minke whales on several of our tours as well, especially if orcas were in the vicinity of Salmon Bank and Hein Bank (minke feeding areas). Humpbacks that were seen on tours this past week were either unidentified, or in one case, a “new to science” whale, meaning that they have never previously been recording by community scientists or researchers. That’s another thing that is rare, so a treat for those who got to see that humpback whale.
As temperatures heat up for us in the PNW, we look forward to getting out on the water, cooling down, and to seeing what the next week of wildlife sightings is going to bring us.
