Monday, May 19

Viewing wildlife is an amazing experience, simply because the creatures you are viewing are exactly like the term implies – “wild”. One of the definitions for the word ‘wild’ is extravagant; or fantastic, and that’s the kind of wildlife we were viewing this afternoon.

The Pacific Explorer headed out on this somewhat overcast, but flat calm day with a report of Transient orcas in Beecher Bay. With Captain Brad at the helm and marine naturalist Tim talking all things marine mammal (and a bit of local history), we headed west and upon arrival to the orcas we could see five individuals, at least 2 adult females with 2 calves and another what appeared to be female but may have been a juvenile male that hadn’t gone through that “sprouting” of the dorsal fin stage. Nonetheless, these were certainly active orcas! We viewed these mammal-eating killer whales for just under an hour and for the whole time the calves were extremely playful. We saw tail slaps, porpoising, rollovers, tail-stands and were even lucky enough to see a breach and a spyhop! This kind of behaviour is somewhat unusual for transients as they are more likely to do this after they have made a kill. But not today, they were just in the mood! Passengers (and naturalist) could not keep their eyes off these calves as they played around in the water, jumping over each other and up against mum. It really was like they were putting on for us their own little show. Passengers had their fingers rapidly pushing their camera buttons to get a shot of these playful young ones, and some managed to get some shots definitely worth of the pool room. We then left these lively dolphins and headed to Race Rocks were there were a few Stellar sea lions hauled out, a couple of juvenile elephant seals, and plenty of harbor seals hauled out on the rocks. With the calm water, the distinctive black and white-striped lighthouse, and the snow-capped Olympic mountains in the background, passengers were able to easily get that postcard shot that they will look back upon in years to come and say “That’s the day we went on a great marine wildlife tour with that very knowledgeable Australian marine naturalist and saw those baby killer whales playing around, having a bloody great time”. Ok, so it may not be those words exactly, but Monday May 19th will definitely be a day that passengers on this trip will remember. An extravagant marine "wild"-life tour? Most certainly!