Many thanks to those of you that responded to my request for whale watching recommendations a few weeks ago. Wednesday my family took ferries from Anacortes to all of the island stops. With fog present and a forcast for rain, I didn't take much camera gear along figuring the light would be terrible. There wasn't anything unusual visible (that I could identify) from the ferries, although we saw numbers of murres, Rhino Auklets, and Bonaparte's Gulls. We didn't reach Friday Harbor until after 3 pm, and just decided to catch the shuttle bus to the west side of island to look for orcas. I don't know if San Juan Transit has competitors, but I recommend them. A daylong pass is only $10. We headed to Lime Kiln Point SP, but before we reached it our driver spotted some whales and stopped the bus for us. He had been seeing them on every trip around the island that day and indicated they were already south of the park, and offered to let us off right there. We could care less about the Bald Eagle in the tree right in front of us becuase we saw at least 7 different groups of orcas and between 30 and 40 individuals. We watched in awe for 20 minutes.

I'm glad we didn't take one of the boats out to see them. I was a little disturbed by how the orange zodiak-type boats (something like SEAVIEW SAFARIS) were crowding the whales and continually pursuing right into the middle of the groups. The larger boats seemed to respect their space and maintained some distance from most of the groups surfacing. It's great to see eco-tourism contributing to the local economies instead of personal watercraft rentals, but I hope this encroachment doesn't happen routinely. If it does, we need to get those operators in line with proper viewing ethics or get them out of the business.

Randy Hill, Othello