We just wrapped up a couple of women’s tours to the San Juan Islands. As always, we went orca whale watching as part of the trip.

Every trip is different, and you never know what you’re going to see, but this year our two groups were fortunate to see a couple of very special things.

On our first trip, we found a group of four resident orcas (aka killer whales). The area around the San Juan Islands is home to three pods of “resident orcas”, and the whales we saw were part of the L pod. This group seemed to be hustling to catch up to the rest of the pod that was further away. Our on-board naturalist pointed out that there was a baby orca with the group, which could explain why these were traveling slower than the rest of the pod.

Then the big news… We found out the next day, that on August 12 (the day we were there), in Haro Strait (where we were), there was a new L-pod orca calf discovered! I didn’t get any decent shots myself, but you can see nice photos of the baby orca (called L111) at the Center for Whale Research. Is that cool or what?

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On our next trip, the resident whales had taken off for the big, blue Pacific. (They don’t stay in their home waters all the time, but follow their food supply, which can take them far afield.) When the resident orcas are away, that leaves the coast clear for the “transient orcas” to come through. The two groups keep to themselves, with no mingling, and don’t seem to like each other.

Orca whale T102, San Juan Islands

Transients often travel in small groups, or even solo, but this time we were treated to a group of 12 transients, swimming through the waters near the US/Canada border. Most of the group were females and young orcas, but there was one large male with them, known as T102.

The naturalist explained that T102 is usually a loner, so it was unusual to see him with such a crowd. He certainly wasn’t there to help with the kids or the chores, and their best guess was that he was “courting” one of the females in the group (T101), who had probably mated with him before. In fact, perhaps one of the youngsters was his offspring, making it a family reunion.

T102 gave us a nice show, veering off course to swim straight towards our boat. When the big male dorsal fins (up to 6 feet tall) are this close to your boat, it’s impressive!

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We do San Juan Islands women’s tours every summer. Though the whales come and go (traveling a hundred or more miles in a day), we’ve always been fortunate enough to see them. And yes, I am knocking on wood as I write that.