Awesome orca whale photos from our guest Chelsea taken on a recent San Juan Island one day kayak trip on the west side.

My kayak trip was amazing!

As we set out, it was great to be on the water. I was fascinated by the forest of algae underneath us in many locations of our trip. You could see so much from the kayak, including rock beaches, houses and sailboats traveling in the distance. You could not experience all this any other way!

After lunch, we headed back to our original destination. Not long after launching, our orca experience started! I remember seeing a whale tail ahead of us and almost jumped out of the kayak seat in excitement. Soon, fins started to approach us. People would ask me if I was scared, but all you can feel is pure excitement. As their closeness and massiveness approached, there was a silent 'ahh' surrounding the group. Orcas kept coming by us heading north, mostly traveling. You could see them playing, spy hopping and breaching ahead of us after they passed, but one did breach near us, who I later identified as Slick. Another orca swam between us and the coast, and underneath the murky water you could recognize the white coloring of the whale's underside, swimming slowly on her side.

Just after the orcas passed us, and we made our way towards them, the J-pod turned around heading south, right by us again. You could hear the orcas all around us by their incredible sounds of breath. It was as if they were singing a miraculous song to us and dancing by. At one point, two fins were coming close and went below the water. I knew their next breath of air could be anywhere right next to us. They came up about 5 feet away and I exhaled in astonishment as they exhaled in breath. This was an experience I could not have imagined and still get shivers of marvel when I think of it!

Chelsea - Portland, Oregon

What Do Your Guides do in the Winter?

It has been my good fortune to attract and retain an incredible cadre of professional guides. This year a number of them are going to graduate school. Aya Reiss is living in Vancouver, BC and, as the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, is doing graduate work in stream ecology. Steve Lewis got engaged (about time, dude!) to another of our guides, Sarah Bergman. Steve and Sarah are both enrolled at the U of W where Steve is getting a Masters in environmental policy and Sara is in her second year of med. school.

Farther a field, David Thomlinson just got a job working as an architect in Portland as well as building his second guitar from the ground up. Dave McGraw wrote, edited and produced his first ‘killer’ CD “Northwest/ Southwest” and is living in Arizona working on reintroducing the California Condor back into the Grand Canyon. Kerry Heerman lives on a lake and got a job teaching middle school in the Bellingham School District. And of course, Peter Horne takes the cake for being the farthest a field for his research in the Antarctic dealing with penguins.

The question I get asked the most as the owner of Outdoor Odysseys?

More, even than, where are the whales? That’s easy. I always get asked, “what do I do the other months out of the year when I’m not managing Outdoor Odysseys?”

After my summer season of working seven days a week winds down, the fall and winter are definitely a time for me to slooow down and get reacquainted with my wife who is a nurse practitioner at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. I snuggle up with our cat Barney and go for romps with our dog, Celeste. I also love to read and cook. With our rainy, dark Northwest winters there is always plenty of time for that.

In terms of outdoor stuff I love to ski – both telly and skate ski. This winter I’m headed for Canada for a couple of trips as well as a high Sierra traverse in April. And of course, as a small business owner, there is always stuff to do over the winter. Marketing and staff hiring are my two primary considerations.

Resident Orcas Listed As Endangered

In November 2005 the NOAA Fisheries made the announcement that the Southern Resident Orcas had been placed on the federal endangered species list. Now, the Fisheries Service by law must designate “critical habitat” for the orcas as well as complete a recovery plan that defines the risk to the whales and what steps need to be taken to protect them.

What does all this mean for these beautiful creatures that are such an integral part of the San Juan Islands and the Pacific Northwest? The whales are definitely “on the brink” in terms of their long-term viability. One of the major concerns has been the diminishment of their primary food source - salmon. The salmon have declined due to over-fishing, loss of fresh and salt-water habitat, dam building and poor logging practices. Coupled with the loss of their primary food source has been a build up of deadly toxins such as PCB’s, which harm the whale’s reproductive capabilities.

That’s the bad news…the positive aspect of the listing by the feds is that it will bring about more concentrated efforts to help protect the whales than if the whales had just been listed as threatened.