Sunday, August 5

For the morning trip we were in scan mode as no orcas had been spotted by our spotting network. Our Orca Spirit tour drove through the fog towards Hein Bank. Since we had limited vision through the fog we tried listening for vocalizations in the water with our hydrophone. Unfortunately no whales were spotted but we did see a lot of Harbour Seal activity by Whale Rocks and enjoyed the stunning coastline of San Juan Island.

In the afternoon we decided to head south in search of Humpbacks by Port Angeles. The fog was very thick in this area and after scanning we decided to go check out Race Rocks. The rocks appeared eerily out of the fog with the fog horn from the lighthouse being heard before anything could be seen. We did see a number of Stellar Sea Lions hauled out on the rocks as well as two large Elephant Seals in the water.

For our final trip of the day we made our way back over to Hein Bank where a Minke Whale and a Pacific White-sided Dolphin were spotted earlier on in the day. After our search we again went to see Whale Rocks where a few of our guests thought they spotted a pelican, most probably a Brown Pelican, which would be a fantastic sight! Although no whales were spotted today, there was definitely interesting wildlife in the area.

Saturday, August 4

In the morning we heard that orcas were spotted coming in west past Race Rocks. Our drive out took us to Beecher Bay where we found L-pod spread out along the Vancouver Island side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We were fortunate enough to see a number of whales pass us and saw a number of breaches off in the distance; it was nice that L-pod had finally returned from their trip out to the ocean!

In the afternoon we met up with L-pod again who were south of the Victoria Harbour. We had a fantastic pass by Skana, one of the large males of L-pod. Finally for our evening trip we met up with not only L-pod but also J-pod and possibly K-pod off the shoreline of San Juan Island. The whales were clearly excited to see each other as they were extremely active and some mating was observed!. Before we headed in for the day, Mega from L-pod did a fantastic breach off the back of our boat.