What a great start to August!
Here are some beautiful photos taken by Captain John on August 1st!
Although we often refer to August as “Fog-ust,” the first day of the month we had nothing but calm seas and blue skies. We began our morning tour by heading southeast to the shoreline of Washington, USA where we left a foraging Gray Whale the night before. It did not take long to spot the heart shaped blow as it reaches almost 15ft into the air. All of our guests got a great look as we watched bubbles rise from the disturbed mud and then the whale itself surfaced over and over. If that was not enough, we moved on to a humpback that was spotted by other boats in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Even though both types of whales are known as baleen whales and were about 40ft in length their behaviors were totally different. We watched as the humpback foraged for small fish and plankton in the water before showing its tail flukes and going on a 5 or so minute dive. By this point our time was limited so we had a brief stop at Trial Island to look at Harbour Seals hauled out on the rocks, then it was back into the Victoria Harbour.
One of the beautiful things about the area is the each time we leave the harbour we never know what will happen. Instead of ‘baleen’ whales we came across ‘toothed’ whales, our southern resident orcas. After a 4 day absence (they were off the west coast in the open pacific coast.) We were pleased to get word of our 3 pods (89 individuals) returning to the waters surrounding Victoria. For both the afternoon and evening tours we watched as members of J, K & L pods spread out feeding and socializing between Race Rocks and the west side of San Juan Island. We were able to view such things as breaching (coming completely out of the water), spy hoping (head vertically out of the water), and even tail lobbing (slapping the tail flukes on the surface of the water.) The guests and naturalists (Nicole & Sheenah) were able to identify some individuals; Faith, Gaia, & Ruffles as well as many other females from each pod. We stopped at the Chain Islands on the way home to top the tour off with some Harbour Seals, black oystercatchers, Brandt cormorants and many gulls enjoying the sun and ample food living amongst the bull kelp forests.
