Helllllllo summer! Wow! What a week! Resident killer whales every day, doing the San Juan shuffle, and humpbacks and minke whales coming out of the woodwork left, right, and centre. The days of multi-species trips are upon us! This is actually early in the season for such a high success rate involving multiple species. Usually… Read more »
My apologies for doubling up on the sightings reports this week, there’s just too many good sightings to talk about! The last few days have been all killer whales, all the time! We had several days of both residents AND transients, with a humpback or two thrown in for good measure. We’ve also seen whales… Read more »
As June winds down, it’s time start thinking about reflecting on what this month has been like, and as you can imagine, these things can be tough to sum up. This June has exceptional and exceptionally average in a few different ways. What could I possibly mean by that? Well each month has a few… Read more »
This week saw the return of L-pod, hopefully for the long term, which is our largest family in the Southern Resident Killer Whale community. Up until this point we had only seen J-pod, and two brief visits from L-pod last week. And there were members of K-pod mixed in there as well! We don’t have… Read more »
All killer whales, all week again! June is off to a great start with both ecotypes of killer whales making strong appearances, and the odd humpback and Minke whale showing their smiling baleen faces. The residents seem to have started to settle into their favourite summer spots. J-pod were often hanging out by San Juan… Read more »
My apologies for a slight delay in the sightings report this week. Starting now, weekly sighting reports will be sent out on Saturday afternoons. All I can say about this week is wow. The killer whales dominated the waves, with almost equal reports of residents and transients, although there were a couple days spent with… Read more »
The revolving door continued this week with transient orca and humpbacks dominating early on, and residents returning to the area for May long weekend! The same four humpbacks we’ve been seeing lately were enjoying what has become a common feeding spot for them. They are liking the northern end of our range, occasionally meaning that… Read more »
Another solid week in the Salish Sea, this week had a large percentage of single animal sightings; a humpback here, transient male orca there, grey whale over here. Later in the week our favourite humpback, Big Mama, broke the trend and joined up with a lesser known animal, Windy. You might notice some whales have friendly names, while others we just refer to using seemingly random letters and numbers.… Read more »
Man, I swear all the cetaceans in the Salish Sea are in cahoots. It’s like they’re in a revolving door. We just keep seeing different things every day! Residents, transients, humpbacks, residents, humpback, transients, Pacific white-sided dolphins (they showed up randomly on the 28th), transients, residents, humpback, transients. It’s nuts! J-pod left the area on… Read more »
The last couple of weeks have been amazingly steady, especially for April, and things don’t show any signs of slowing down. Our current whale sighting success rate is between 86-92% depending if you look at individual trips, or days. Of course, recent sightings have almost nothing to do with future sightings because things can change… Read more »