Wednesday, July 11

This morning, we headed east to San Juan Island in search of our resident orcas. We searched the waters of its western shore in the hope of finding J, K and L pod. Without success, we travelled to Hein Bank, which is where we often find minke whales this time of year foraging for small schooling fish such as herring. Although we did not find any whales, it was a birder's delight as we found several rhinoceros auklets and many gulls waiting for the whales as well. We concluded our adventure with a trip to the Chain Islets, where we found several seals and a bald eagle! Despite the lack of whale sightings, it was an amazing trip on the calm cool waters of Haro Strait.

This afternoon, we received word of a humpback whale east of Race Rocks. Our afternoon was spent admiring this majestic animal as we were treated to several amazing passes. It is always a pleasure to see a humpback, as at one point they were almost whaled out of existence. It is only in the past few years that they have started to rediscover our waters in abundance. On the way back to Victoria, we stopped at the always spectacular Race Rocks, where we introduced guests to the harbour seals and elephant seals that are found in abundance this time of year. It was another great trip aboard the Orca Spirit.


With our southern resident orcas still out of our range for the evening trip, we headed to the waters off Port Angeles, where we received word of another humpback whale. When we arrived on scene, we surprised to see a rare visitor to these waters, a lone Pacific white-sided dolphin! We watched the playful little mammal play with the boats, including ours, and would later enjoy watching him (or her) surf in our wake. At the same time, the humpback whale was thrilling our passengers with some spectacular lunge feeding behaviour and tail slaps, as it circled our boat. It was a truly fantastic experience, and it was something that this naturalist had not seen before. To end this already wonderful trip, we travelled to Race Rocks where we noticed some of our first young harbour seal pups of the season. We also saw a few elephant seals lounging in the evening sun.