Monday, September 17th

On the morning trip we headed out East towards San Juan Island. We travelled round to Cattle Point and stopped at Whale Rocks where we saw some Harbour seals and Stellar sea lions watching us from the water with more hauled out on the rocks. There was also a large group of cormorants huddled towards one end of the rock. Still no whale sightings but we headed further out into the straight on a loop back to Victoria, and our zodiac was with a Minke whale. We stopped and watched it surfacing a number of times, when a large flock of birds was spotted diving into the water. We headed over and and there was a feeding frenzy with the sea birds diving in, TWO Minkes feeding in the same patch (one flicked up its tail in the air showing us its belly!), and even a Harbour seal joining in to round it all off.

In the afternoon we travelled West to see a Humpback. All the way round the coast to Sooke we found the whale leisurely feeding, and after a short while of watching we saw the whale throw its tail up in the air and slap it down on the surface, not once but twice! With this the fog closed in so it was off to race rocks, for Stellar and Californian sea lions and harbour seals before the trip back to harbour.