Friday, August 17th

This morning, we received reports of killer whales at Trial Island, so our 10 am trip headed east to meet up with a large group of transient orcas travelling eastbound towards Discovery Island. The group of orcas was later identified as the T124's a group of transient orcas that includes T124 (the matriarch) and her calves. Although there were no mature males in the group, they were still an awe-inspiring sight as we enjoyed the beauty of this majestic predators. Their close proximity to the harbour allowed us to spend plenty of time with the whales, and also explore some other sights. We checked out Great Chain Island, where we noticed two bald eagles on the cormorant nests and several harbour seals. It is most likely the abundance of young harbour seal pups in the area, that has resulted in an increased number of transient sightings this past week. After a tour of the Chatham Island coastline, we met up with the whales in Haro Strait, where we watched the whales with the scenic backdrop pf the Discovery Island lighthouse. On the return to the harbour, we explored the coastline of Trial Island, where we saw another mature bald eagle, many more harbour seals and even some spectacular Lions Mane jellyfish! It was an excellent tour and a fine way to the start the day.

For the 1 pm trip, we travelled near Kelp Reef to meet up with the T124's. We travelled north with the whales as they made their way slowly north towards the Kelp Reef marker. We had some excellent passes with the mammal-eating orcas before we headed into Juan De Fuca Strait to see what else we could find. We stopped at Trial Island first to look at the harbour seals and a couple of eagles before we headed towards Race Rocks to see a humpback whale that had been found. We had an excellent time visiting with the spectacular animal and we were thrilled to see it fluke several times. We concluded our tour with a trip through the Race Rocks Ecological Reserve. It was a great day on the water.