The T123s off Washington Park

T123/Sidney + T123A/Stanley (Photo: Sara Montour Lewis / Our Wild Puget Sound)

This day started off with the intention of finding two great horned owls that I had seen the previous day but the orcas of the Salish Sea rarely like to give up their spotlight so, of course, they came marching south towards where I was at and they got so close that I had no choice but to ditch the birds to find them.

There were reports of them earlier in the day in Samish Bay and when they made it to the east side of Guemes Island I raced over to March Point to see if I could spot them. When I got there I saw them surface just off the docks at March Point, heading west towards Anacortes.

The T123s passing between March Point and Guemes Island (Photo: Sara Montour Lewis / Our Wild Puget Sound)

The T123s passing between March Point and Guemes Island (Photo: Sara Montour Lewis / Our Wild Puget Sound)

From that quick glimpse I thought these little group might be the T123s, who are a pretty familiar family around Puget Sound and had been seen in Haro Strait the day before. This group is made up of T123/Sidney and her three offspring, T123A/Stanley, T123C/Lucky, and T123D/Darcy.

Information about the T123s from our Bigg’s Killer Whale guide

As they were passing March Point I decided to head over to Anacortes to see if I could catch them again as they passed. I stopped at a few viewpoints along the way, but seemed to keep missing them. Finally I decided to get ahead of them and make a run for the loop road at Washington Park. As I passed Green Point I could see excited faces with binoculars and cameras pointed west, so I kept moving along until I ditched my car at one of the pullouts, grabbed my camera, and ran as fast as I could down the trail out to Fidalgo Head where they popped up right in front of me with Stanley’s unmistakable* dorsal fin rising out of the water.

*Kind of mistakable, actually! Fun fact: Stanley has a doppelgänger named Yelnats whose dorsal fin is very, very similar and has tricked all of us in the Salish Sea several times!

T123A/Stanley (Photo: Sara Montour Lewis / Our Wild Puget Sound)

T123D/Darcy + T123C/Lucky (Photo: Sara Montour Lewis / Our Wild Puget Sound)

They were passing really slowly and started making some directional changes, so I thought there was a chance that they might hunt and hang around for a bit.

T123C/Lucky (Photo: Sara Montour Lewis / Our Wild Puget Sound)

They ended up sticking to their course and heading south out towards Rosario Strait and then south along the west side of Whidbey Island. It’s hard not to crave more time with these epic creatures, but I had 20 minutes alone with them on a beautiful, sunny April day and that’s nearly impossible to beat.

The T123s traveling west past Washington Park (Photo: Sara Montour Lewis / Our Wild Puget Sound)