WHALE TALES

Nikki and her family went to Oahu for their entire stay in Hawaii. My family decided to island hop. Guess what I did? I found out what island had the most whales and where. Then I found a place to stay where I would have the best chance of seeing whales and that turned out to be Maui.

The beautiful humpbacks hang out around the island of Maui during the winter months. I thought I might see a whale here and there, but no, my first morning with coffee in my hand looking at the ocean I watched humpbacks breach out in the distance. I had gone on a whale watching trip back in Boston several years ago. I went hoping to see a humpback breach because that was what the advertisement said and promised, but no luck. Now my first morning in Maui I am seeing more breaches than I can keep trac

We pack the kids up, get on the ferry and head to our west side ocean view rental. We pull in and the kids are excited by the pool. But Nikki’s oldest daughter on the trip, Ginny says I just saw a whale. We weren’t sure she knew what she was talking about, so we stopped unloading luggage and go to look. She was right, the orca were already in front of our home feeding, playing, resting, etc. My mom was shocked. She didn’t understand how easy it was going to be to see the whales. I didn’t think they would be around as soon as we pulled in to our rental for the week. They stayed for hours. One group then another. We didn’t end up unloading or getting in the house until late that evening. We all watched whales. What a way to start the week off!

It was a

Orca Network is a nonprofit for whales, and whose big mission is to return Lolita, the orca back to her home waters, thus reuniting her with her family (Lpod). The Orca Network also organizes a trip to Baja every year to see the Gray whales. It is a fundraising mission where you get to see whales and also have an opportunity to interact with whale experts. As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t get better than that.

This trip encompasses two boat trips a day out into a lagoon to experience what the locals call “friendlies”. Friendlies are gray whales that decide to interact with humans on boats. Most friendlies are mother grays with their babies. The real crazy part of this adventure is gray whales were almost hunted to extinction in this same lagoon. Hunters knew

We have a travel tradition where we go on a trip to celebrate a big birthday. Meaning decade changing birthdays. It started with mine and now it was Eric’s turn. He decided he wanted to go back to San Juan.

Friends and family had been listening to me talk about the whales ever since our last trip, and everyone now was pretty interested in seeing what Eric and I had experienced our first trip. There were a couple years between our trips to San Juan, so some things had changed, especially the orcas’ hunting habits. The SRW eat chinook as their primary diet. Because of the snake water dams on the Columbia River, the chinook salmon have been dwindling in numbers. The SRW are now struggling to feed themselves and not able to spend the entire summer filling their bellies on

There are two groups of resident orcas that commune in the Pacific Northwest. The Northern Resident Whales (Vancouver Island area) and the Southern Resident Whales (SRW) (San Juan, WA area). I wanted to see SRW. After all, Lolita, an SRW whale, was captured in 1970 in Penn Cove, Puget Sound, Washington.

She is the last living orca from this capture in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium. Her mother L 25, an SRW, was still alive and swimming free in the Pacific Northwest. As one of my goals, I wanted to meet the whales that the captivity industry nearly wiped out. I wanted to tell them sorry for all the bad that had been done to them by humans. I was educated and awake now, and I needed to apologize.

Although we were going to spend my 40th Birthday in San Juan, WA, we decided