September 7, 2006

This morning we went searching for whales and headed off towards Race Rocks and the west coast of Vancouver Island. Before continuing along the shores of beautiful and rugged East Sooke Park, we stopped off at Race rocks to enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells (hummm, maybe we didn't really enjoy the fish-breath of the sea lions) of the California and Stellar Sea Lions. As amusing as ever, the sea lions barked, grunted and growled! On the lower levels of the rocks, we also saw some Harbor seals, the favourite food of the transient killer whale. We continued on our trip out west, however, our search was interrupted by a large fog bank that made it hard to see. Near the mouth of the Victoria harbour, a pea-soup thick fog bank appeared as we were heading back. It was very eerie since we could hear, but not see a very large cruise ship that was backing into its berth.

This afternoon, we headed in an entirely different direction. We had heard of some transient killer whales off of East Point, which is the southern most tip of Saturna Island. Our long trip was rewarded with sightings of around 8 or more transients who were in a particularly playful mood. We saw them spy-hop and breach, and there was one particular youngster who felt that she had to slap her tail every time she took a dive. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we enjoyed traveling home with views of the Canadian Gulf Islands, and through the American San Juan Islands.

This evening we rushed up to visit the transient whales from this afternoon, but were thwarted by the distance they had created between Victoria and themselves in the few hours we were not on scene. But all was not lost, we saw many other really interesting sea life, including big horn sheep. Oh yes, I did say big horn sheep! There is an island in the San Juans that has been populated with big horn sheep and deer. We saw hundreds of them; the most our captain has ever seen out at once! After the big horn sheep, we went and visited many sea birds and saw an incredibly big eagles nest. Amazing sun-set on the way back and even though those transients eluded us, it was a wonderful evening!