Orca Whales Near Deception Pass
6/17/2010 What a day! We were just leaving Guemes Channel when we encounter whales! We had J-pod whales southbound! The first whales we got to visit with were Granny and Ruffles who met up with Samish, Riptide, Hy'Shqa, Suttles and Se-Yi'-chn. Hy'Shqa kept side diving over and over again! Then they were teaching Se-Yi'-chn how to tail lob and cartwheel! We got a spyhop and lots of tail lobs. Then Granny breached for us! Quickly followed by Ruffles breaching too! Granny is 99 years old! She can still show the young whales a thing or two! We had so much time with the whales today! They travelled all the way down to Deception Pass Bridge before they started heading west. We went under the bridge. It was great! On our way back out of Deception Pass we found a California sea lion hanging out in the water. We then decided to try and catch up to the orcas to try and get a few more good looks. We headed to the south end of Lopez Island and watched them go down the side of the boat. We had some amazing looks at Mike as he made his way past our boat. At this point, the boat is shut down and everyone is looking off the port side, when a little boy comes from the starboard side and exclaims, "What is everyone looking at?!" It was priceless and everyone got a good laugh out of it! We left the whales behind us and found some harbor seals hauled out on the south end of Lopez Island. We did a slow down and found a purple sea star, pigeon guillemots and even a bald eagle! It was such a spectacular day on the water!
