Saturday, October 4th

This morning, the Orca Spirit, Captain Brad, naturalist Corey (me) and our intrepid group of passengers headed south into Juan De Fuca Strait in search of whales and other wildlife. For me, nothing beats late summer/early autumn whale watching and this trip was just another example of why. Shortly after leaving the harbour, we spotted two humpback whales. These leviathons of the deep amazed us with some spectacular behaviour, and gave us some awesome views of their tail flukes. The markings on the tail flukes of humpback whales are unique to each individual whale and we can use them to monitor which whales are returning to the area each year.

While watching the whales, our Captain kept his eye out for orcas. Looking through his binoculars, while we were watching the humpbacks, Brad managed to spot a distant dorsal fin. We left the humpbacks to investigate and soon found ourselves surrounded by orcas! Were these residents or transients? These are the questions we also ask when we arrive on scene. It was only a short time into our encounter that a surprise surfacing from a large male left us no doubt as to their identity. Mega (L41) surfaced next to us! It was the L12's, a group of resident orcas from L-pod. We watched these animals move east, than do an about face and travel west. It was near the end of the trip, that we had absolutely one of those awe-inspiring moments. As we were watching the orcas, the humpback whales were only a short distance away. One of them began slapping its huge tail flukes. The humpback whales travelled towards us and at one point, we observed the large pectoral fins of a humpback whale and the spectacular dorsal fin of a large male killer whale. We were enjoying the company of the two most amazing cetaceans at the same time! What a spectacular trip. It was an excellent way to end a wonderful trip!