Despite intense yearning and best efforts, guests and crew aboard the M/V Sea Hawk were reminded that one can flip only so many whale tails before you’re certain to get a deadhead.  After a lucky run of tours over the past week, which included multiple whale species, the laws of statistics came bear, resulting in not one sighting of a cetacean today.

No matter, our guests could still be heard chattering and laughing from the Canadian shoreline as we plied the...

Last night around 11:00 PM, snow began falling on the quiet community of San Juan Island. It gently snowed all through the night, and produced this magical snowy island scene. It's not often the Friday Harbor receives snow; the Pacific Ocean regulates our temperate climate. It's a rare event for San Juan Island to get any measurable snow!

Snow on San Juan Island

December 9, 2016

Tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox! And even though this signals the true end to summer, this doesn’t mean that all the whales leave as all the humans have started to do. Whales actually travel through these waters all year round! Yesterday, though, still felt a little bit like summer. Captain Brian, myself and some wonderful guests took the M/V Seahawk south to search for the Southern Resident Orcas. They have been in the inland waters the past few days foraging for salmon...

  This afternoon, Captain Gabe and I set off from Roche Harbor with arguably the best dressed guests we've ever had on board. They had just had a wedding! Normally, I would have advised the ladies to change clothes before getting on the boat--just because the wind can be chilly. But this group came fully prepared, with carefully picked out and coordinated sweaters to go with the dresses, and blankets for all. Luckily though, we were having perfect weather with lots of sunshine and very little...

Sunday mornings, especially on holiday weekends, are my favorite times to be at Roche Harbor. The excitement in the air is palpable, usually the sun is shining in a bright blue sky, and we have the chance to welcome and host a group of very enthusiastic people.

This Labor Day weekend was no different. On our 11am departure we had a group of our Southern Resident Killer Whales reported off the Westside of San Juan Island. We were treated to an awesome encounter with members of two of the local...

Today, Captain Gabe and I took a super enthusiastic group out on the M/V Seahawk! We headed south along the west side of San Juan Island to look for the Southern Resident Killer Whales. These are the salmon eating ones that live in the north pacific and usually spend much of the summer inside the Salish Sea since salmon have to make their way through to find the rivers that they were born in. This year is a historically low salmon year so we have not seen the residents that much this summer, but...

Guess who’s back, back again? It’s not Slim Shady, but it is the largest species of Sea Lions in the world!! In the San Juan Islands there is an over-wintering population of Steller’s Sea Lions, aka Northern Sea Lions, aka Eumetopias jubatus. These sea lions inhabit the northern Pacific Rim Coast from Northern California to Northern Japan and are a unique feature to our area. They went through a steep decline in the ‘80s and 90’s for unknown reasons, but now their population seems to have...

Mike J26 and sibling near Gooch Island

Captain Gabe and I were delighted to hear that there were southern resident killer whales spread from Turn Point to Battleship Island as we were leaving the dock this morning. Knowing that they were headed south at high speeds (8 kts), we decided to exit through Mosquito Pass which spits us out at Open Bay near Kellet Bluff on Henry Island. By the time we arrived, so had the whales.

At first we were passed by the K13s, a group of...

[caption id="attachment_1658" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="K25 Scoter breaching"]

This afternoon, Captain Pete and I motored north on M/V Sea Hawk with 18 guests on board toward a report of southern resident killer whales. Not far from Blunden, we picked up the K13s, a group of 7. It started out as a pretty standard encounter--grouped up animals surfacing intermittently, and guests were thrilled. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, they...