Thursday, October 4th

The first stop on the trip was South of Victoria for a scan of the area where we had watched 2 humpbacks the previous day. After a 10 minute look we carried on our journey out to the West and again slowed down to scan the Strait for possible humpbacks and transient or resident Orcas. We turned in closer to shore and headed back East towards Race Rocks, where we saw a few seals and sea lions. On leaving the area we discovered we had 2 humpbacks ahead of us, and on arrival saw both tail flukes rise into the air one after the other, and waited for them to resurface after their long dive. We then watched them surface a number of times and the behaviour suggested they were feeding together. One of the individuals lifted its tail high in the air twice to bring it down on the surface in a big tail slap, just before we had to leave to return to Victoria.

In the afternoon we headed out to the area we had watched humpbacks on the morning trip. Both were still in the area surfacing and diving together, and again we saw some tail slapping from one of the whales. We also watched a large group of Stellar Sea Lions swimming in the water. They stopped behind the boat to watch us for a bit, all taking it in turns to stick their noses up in the air to breathe before rolling over on their backs and going down on a dive. We travelled out in the Strait to see if we could find any other species in the area, before heading towards Race Rocks to check out the seals and sea lions hauled out.