Tour Information
For 26 years, Puget Sound Express has set the standard for exciting whale watching tours and wildlife tours around the Olympic Peninsula and the San Juan Islands. Based in the Victorian seaport and arts community of Port Townsend, Washington, we are a family-run business with three generations of dedication and experience connecting visitors with the great outdoors.
Puget Sound Express offers a variety of adventure cruises for you to choose from – all easily accessible from Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Peninsula:
Port Townsend-San Juan Island (Friday Harbor)
Our signature tour, this daylong cruise on the Glacier Spirit combines orca watching with an on-board naturalist, and a tour of the beautiful San Juan Islands. We visit the popular town of Friday Harbor for shopping, island cuisine, and sightseeing.
This San Juan Islands trip is the official ferry route between Port Townsend and Friday Harbor, and in addition to seeing killer whales, we often see minke whales, Stellar and California sea lions and Dall’s porpoises.
Four Hour Guaranteed Killer Whale Watching Tour
The perfect trip for visitors and travelers with a busy schedule! Departing in the morning as well as the afternoon, our fast and comfortable vessel Olympas seeks out the killer whales to give you a guaranteed whale watching experience in the San Juan Islands.
Trips feature an on-board naturalist, and if the whales are “singing,” you’ll be able to hear them with our hydrophone.
Gray Whale Tour
Each spring, migrating gray whales pass through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, providing an excellent opportunity to visit and learn about these amazing mammals. We run half-day whale tours in March and April (depending on migration pattern) to see the grays.
Bird Migration Cruise
Produced in partnership with the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, our three-hour Spring and Fall Bird Migration Cruises coincide with annual migrations of loons, phalaropes, mergansers, merlins, bald eagles, oystercatchers, harlequin ducks, murrelets, auklets, and more.
Naturalists from the Marine Science Center serve as on-board interpreters and provide commentary on local birds, mammals, geology, history and weather.
Protection Island Puffin Cruise
Produced in partnership with the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, our three-hour Protection Island Cruises head just outside of Port Townsend for summer evening visits with thousands of rhinoceros auklets, glaucous-winged gulls, pigeon guillemots, double-crested and pelagic cormorants, black oystercatchers.
The prize of the trip, however, is the chance to see pairs of pairs of tufted puffins.
