By Captain Ken Rea
A day with T36s J Pod, a Minke and an otter. A mixed bag of marine life today. On the morning tour the ferry was running an hour late and my guests all happened to be early except for one on the late running ferry. It worked out to have him jump off at Orcas Island and the rest of us zipped over to pick him up there. Then we continued on to meet up with the T36s pod of Bigg’s Killer Whales.
I first thought I had T37A with them until I was back on my computer and saw they were similar, but it was T36B I was seeing. There is a young calf in this group T336 B3, born in 2018.
After viewing them for a while, we moved on and saw some Harbor Seals, Black Oystercatchers, Harlequin Ducks and Canada Geese.
On the second tour, I heard there was a Humpback Whale down in the area of J Pod. We spent time with J Pod including J31 Tsuchi and her new calf J56 Tofino. We never did see the Humpback, but a Minke Whale surfaced close by to the matriline of the J Pod we were watching.
J Pod was pretty widespread, we also had glimpse of J 27 Blackberry, J26 Mike, J 44 Moby, J39 Mako and more.
Ken Rea, owner and operator of the Spirit of Orca, is also the tour guide, photographer and naturalist on his Whale Watching and Wildlife Tours in the Salish Sea, San Juan Island, Washington.
Photos by Ken Rea
To learn more about Captain Ken, visit https://spiritoforca.com
