May 13, 2026 — ABOARD THE MOLLY B, on the Salish sea – They are big. They are beautiful. And they are back.
The return of the humpback whale to greater numbers than observed in decades is part of a larger revival of marine mammals in the Salish Sea. It is an astonishing sight of life rebounding, with exception of the endangered southern residents orcas.
On a recent day in the waters of the San Juan Islands, pink salmon were jumping, and masses of sea birds were feasting on forage fish. Baby seals lazed alongside their mothers on the rocks, too sleepy to be bothered by a boat quietly chuffing by. The quick dives of harbor porpoise, with their tiny dorsal, knifed the water. Minke whales, too, sliced the surface.
It’s in these conditions the humpbacks have made a spectacular recovery at about 8% a year.
Until about the 1910s humpback whales were common, but then they were hunted to near extinction by commercial whaling.
“You never saw them,” said Joe Gaydos, science director for the SeaDoc Society, a science and education nonprofit based on Orcas Island. “Now they are showing up in places where they had not been seen since the 1900s. Now we see them willy-nilly, spring, summer, fall, winter.”
It’s a reminder, Gaydos said, of the difference policies to protect and preserve animals and their habitat can make.
Read the full article at the Bellingham Herald