Many different marine mammal sightings!

Saturday, September 26th

This morning we headed east with reports of orcas in Rosario Strait. We scanned the southwest coast of San Juan Island and were going to continue our way east when our zodiac captain found transient orcas east of Race Rocks. Returning west, we encountered a group of 4 resting humpback whales! After watching these magnficent animals, we continued east. Shortly after leaving the humpbacks, we spotted a large dorsal fin. It was the dorsal fin of T87, a huge male transient orca. We had an amazing pass from T87 and T88, a female is perhaps T87's mother. We saw another group of orcas off in the distance and were soon visited by "Chainsaw" ,or T63 as he is known to researchers, and several females. Following the group was T14, Pender. What an incredible morning as we saw three of the most iconic orcas on the coast!

For our afternoon trip, we travelled towards Trial Island where we encountered 2 humpback whales travelling slowly westward. The possibility of seeing humpback whales and orcas in the same trip is what makes September whale watching so amazing and this afternoon would prove to be another great wonderful trip as we left the humpback whales to look for this morning's transient orcas. By the afternoon, the large group of orcas had dispersed, but we were able to spot T87 and T88 near Race Rocks. We travelled with them to Whirl Bay and left them to visit Race Rocks. With Steller and California sea lions both too numerous to count, and several harbour seals, it was a great visit to the ecological reserve. In fact, with some brief views of some reluctant Dall's porpoises, many of our guests saw 6 different species of marine mammals!