Here’s another weekly report recap with the whales and wildlife that were encountered while out on tours from August 3rd through August 9th.
Bigg’s killer whales seen on our trips include: the T19 trio, T36s with T137A (7), T46s (3), T65As (no A5, for 5), all four of the T77s, though they were often split in pairs with other traveling partners, the T100s (3), T101s (3), and the T124A2s (3). This totaled 31 killer whales—a great total with a diversity of family groups.
A notable from this past week is that T137A “Jack” is still spending the majority of his time with his extended family of grandma T36 “Flapjack”and her daughter T36B and grand offspring. I’ve scoured the Finwave platform and other sightings networks but have been unable to turn up any sightings of the rest of the T137s. We’re very curious to know if Jack just decided to go it alone/spend time with other family for a little while to mix things up, or if there could there be a change in his direct matriline (one of his sisters having a calf?), or etc.? It will be interesting to see what happens with him as the summer continues.
Baleen whales we encountered on our trips include:
Humpbacks Exclamation, Nike, Divot and her 2026 calf, Scuttle, and a couple humpback whales that we were unable to get identifying features for. Folks onboard that encountered Exclamation watched as this whale quite literally had a spa day. They rolled around in the kelp, draped it across their tail, pec flippers, face—it really looked like they were enjoying the experience. It was a pretty unique encounter in that lots of different body parts of the whale could be seen for an extended period of time, really taking in and understanding how large these creatures are! A few stray gray whales have been seen en route to other wildlife over this past week. Again, no identifying features that stand out to us, but photos will get passed along to Cascadia Research Collective for their records.
Some other notable wildlife sightings this week happened when we were able to get out to the Smith and Minor Island areas for Tufted Puffins and those rare-to-our-area American White Pelicans are STILL hanging around, too! While we don’t even see many Brown Pelicans inside the Salish Sea (they are primarily a coastal species), it’s even more rare to encounter the White variety; they tend to occupy more inland/fresh water areas. A single sea otter was sighted on several of our tours, as well as moon and eggyolk jellies. There are lots of things to see and pretty soon we may be seeing a shift in season where some of our winter birds begin showing up, as well!
As always, we look forward to seeing what next week has to offer us!
