One of the biggest items I’d wanted to tick off my bucket list when I came to Seattle for the week was seeing killer whales in the wild.

My aunt found a wonderful family owned operation known as Puget Sound Express that leaves out of Port Townsend twice daily on a 4 hour tour of the San Juan Islands, a famous place for searching out both resident and transient killer whales.

A little marine mammal biology lesson for everyone! The most distinguishing characteristic of resident orcas is that they are strictly fish eaters. Transients, on the other hand, are mammal hunters, having a diet consisting of seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises and even other whale species. While both are the same species they are in fact different ‘ecotypes’, which in essence is like saying they are a different race (i.e. humans are all the same species Home sapiens but there are different races of humans within the Homo sapiens species). However unlike humans these ecotypes do not breed, rarely interact, and their vocalizations vary so greatly it is thought they may not even be able to communicate well (if at all) with each other.

Ok science lesson over - back to the trip itself.

Before I even got on the boat I saw some adorable wildlife on the nearby docks - otters!

There were five of them and they were playing with each other and sunning themselves.

When we finally boarded it was a small boat with only perhaps 30 of us though it seemed smaller which was wonderful. The captain was also our naturalist and was fabulously knowledgable of the surrounding areas and islands as well as the local wildlife.

It took us about an hour to get to the San Juan Islands but as soon as we got there we found the J pod of resident killer whales.

The whales started off fairly far away from us and then, as the captain cut the engines and generator and we drifted with the waves, the pod turned towards us and came within 100 feet!

There really isn’t any other way to describe it other than ‘wicked awesome’.

Hearing their powerful exhales every time they surfaced, watching the enormous dorsal fin emerge slowly out of the water, and laughing as the young orca tried really hard to get the adults in the pod to play with him. He was unfortunately unsuccessful in his endeavors.

As an added bonus because it was a smaller group of people our captain was able to lower a hydrophone into the water and we all got to hear the whales vocalizing and communicating with each other.

For the first time ever I tried my hand at using iMovie and editing together the short clips of video I recorded. I also found some awesomely cheesy music to use as background noise (I didn’t think anyone would want to listen to my fellow passengers constantly asking how close the whales normally get and attempting to call them over to the boat like a dog).

After returning back to Port Townsend I was able to spend a bit of time walking around the very quaint town and relaxed on the beach for a while with a book and a latte.

I obviously love all the animals I have worked with over the years but watching them in their natural environment is always a beautiful sight. Plus four hours on the ocean surrounded by wildlife and snow capped mountains is never a bad way to spend a day.

Have you ever been whale watching? What was your favorite part?