The 2009 Book of the San Juan Islands, the annual information and relocation almanac published by The Journal of the San Juan Islands and The Islands’ Sounder, is on the streets.

Copies are available at the newspapers’ offices, on ferries and in ferry terminals, in B&Bs and inns, and in chambers of commerce, real estate offices and visitors bureaus on the islands and the mainland.

Some 80,000 copies are being distributed.

This year’s almanac pays tribute to the Southern resident killer whale pods; the cover photo was taken by Dr. Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research. The almanac has feature stories about the ferry-served islands and Anacortes. It also has pages of information related to demographics, government services, land conservation and preservation, taxes and levies, education, early childhood education, employment and the economy, real estate, affordable housing, history, whales and wildlife, nature, recreation, transportation, and weather.

“With the almanac, we want not only to portray a year in the life of the islands, but also to give people a sense of what it means to live here,” Editor Richard Walker said. “The magazine opens with a poem by Rachel Field, which captures that well: ‘If once you’ve slept on an Island / You’ll never be quite the same …”