Unprecedented numbers of humpback whales have been spotted in the Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan De Fuca. We boarded a tour boat with Puget Sound Express to get an up-close look at the phenomenon and find out what’s bringing them back to the area in droves.
No more than five minutes after Capt. Rob Sanderson pulled away from the dock in Edmonds and before naturalist Renee Beitzel could even finish her “welcome aboard” spiel, passengers on the Chilkat got their first glimpse of what whale experts are calling a spectacular turn of events.
“The humpbacks were hunted out,” explained Sanderson. “They lost all that historical knowledge that there was food for them here and so it’s taken them almost 100 years to rediscover that there is [food for them here].”
“It’s a boom,” Rob told us, and for business too.
Rob and Renee say that’s what’s happened; humpbacks have returned to the shallow areas around Possession Point and the Strait of Juan De Fuca, where tides push the krill they feed on.
“You know it definitely brings in more people and we want to just let people know we see whales every time,” he continued.
And not just the humpbacks; on Friday’s excursion we got a glimpse of L-85, a 25-year-old orca named Mystery. Later we watched more members of the L-Pod surface.
It was the final sighting before we returned to shore though that stunned even the experts—an 85-foot fin whale spotted for the first time this season after returning to these waters last year for the first time in decades.
The only other animal on the planet that is larger than a fin whale is a blue whale, which can reach 100 feet in length but they won’t make an appearance near western Washington.