We have been enjoying the sunshine and abundance of wildlife around the central Salish Sea this past week, and so here is our sightings recap for our tours from June 15th-June 21st:
Bigg’s killer whale presence is holding strong throughout the central Salish Sea and we have seen them on almost all of our tours over the past week. The T64Bs and the T65As ARE STILL traveling with each other (going on 4-5 weeks at this point?), and this week they came north out of Puget Sound and spent some time around the San Juan Islands (8 whales). Other Bigg’s killer whales that we encountered throughout these tour dates were: the T46s (3), T46Bs (9) traveling with T49C, T46B1s with T46C2 (4), T86A1s with T86A3 and T100E (4), T100s (3), T123s (4), T124A1s (2), and the T124A2s (3) making for 41 individuals over the course of the last seven days!
On the baleen whale front, there are still a couple lingering gray whales, and we primarily had two humpbacks that have been foraging within close range to our marina. MMX0099 “Gretzky” and BCY1274 “Seltzer” were our token humpbacks on some of tours over this last week.
Around solstice when we have some extreme low tides, we are often treated to many intertidal creatures that aren’t visible at other times of year. Ochre sea stars, sea cucumbers, and chitons were seen on several of our tours, as well shore birds and seabirds foraging in those areas–an abundance of pigeon guillemots, belted kingfishers, and black oystercatchers, as some examples. A few of our tours took us out near Smith Island, one of the last of two islands in the central Salish Sea where tufted puffins come in to breed and nest from roughly May-September. It’s always an amazing treat to see them. We scan the kelp beds surrounding the west side of Smith as well, and one of our tours was able to turn up a sea otter there this past week. We’re always keeping our eyes peeled while we’re out cruising–you just never know what you’ll see!
We’re looking forward to seeing what the next week brings us on the wildlife front and hope you can join us!
