Sunday, August 26

This morning, we travelled east towards the San Juan Islands in our search of orcas. Despite a great search effort that took us all the way into Rosario Strait, we were unable to find whales this morning. However, we had an enjoyable trip despite the elusiveness of our cetaceans.. After venturing east to the bottom end of Lopez Island, we travelled up the west coast of San Juan Island north of Lime Kiln State Park. There we viewed an enormous bald eagle nest. Below the nest, we noticed a cute, curious, cuddly seal pup playing in the bull kelp below the nest. Our next stop took us back west towards Victoria where we toured the west side of Chatham Island. We watched a magnificent great blue heron, saw several more harbour seals and even admired some intertidal life as we noticed a couple of sea stars at low tide. The choppy waters made for a nice adventure in the Salish Sea.

With reports of transient orcas in Boundary Pass at noon, our 1 pm Orca Spirit travelled north into Plumper Sound to view the mammal hunting orcas. Shortly before arriving on scene, our captain noticed a mature bald eagle at the southern entrance to the sound. We spent a brief time admiring the majestic raptor before continuing north where we found a small group of 3 transients travelling along the west side of the sound. The group of whales included a large mature male, although it was difficult to identify who they were. On our return to Victoria, we enjoyed a high-speed scenic tour along the coast of Speiden Island where observant passengers noticed some exotic game islands and another magnificent eagle. We stopped briefly at Sidney Island to view an eagle nest. As we passed quickly by D'arcy Island, our passengers learned of its infamous history as a former leper colony. Finally, we stopped at Zero Rock to view a large number of the transient orcas favourite food item - the harbour seal.


Saturday, August 25

Our morning trip was very exciting as we headed east towards Rosario Strait in search of Orcas. On our way there we had to cross the Haro Strait, a body of water that has San Juan Island to one side and Vancouver Island on the other. The seas in the area were choppy but once we made it to the other side, our guests were rewarded as we had amazing views of our resident orcas. We had a nice pass by Raggedy, indicating that we were looking at members of K-pod. For the afternoon we headed over to the same area and at this point the whales were located in the Haro Strait, which had calmed down considerably. We had a great breach from Mega, a large male from L-pod and saw a number of groups of whales including a baby that may have been the new born identified last week, L110.