https://pugetsoundexpress.com - Sound ON for one of the encounters of the year! On 8/22/24 our Edmonds tour found humpback whale Uluka shortly after departing. While watching Uluka, Captain Brian spotted the T36 family of Bigg’s orcas heading towards us. Uluka and the T36s converged in front of us with Ukula rolling and trumpeting before moving on. We put our hydrophone in the water to listen to the T36s when in the distance the T99 family started breaching and heading our way! We watched them call and breach and reunite then start to travel all the while continuing to breach and tail slap.

This video features incredible orca vocalizations, particularly in the 2nd half of the video. Note: the audio collected from our hydrophone was captured before/during/after the vertical video breaching sequence (in the middle of this video) by Captain/Naturalist Tony. We’ve used the audio from that entire sequence as a soundtrack to the rest of this video.

Video and trip report by Naturalist Kyla.