Sunday, September 9

This morning, we received word that some resident orcas had come in from out west overnight, so we travelled to San Juan Island to find them. We had heard that J-pod was in the area as we arrived at Hannah Heights expecting to see about 25 whales. We observed lots of foraging behaviour and heard lots of echolocation through our hydrophone. We a wonderful array of behaviour from the whales, including a couple of breaches and a spectacular chase/surface lunge from L57 "Faith". When we noticed Faith, we realized we were dealing with more than one pod, and radio reports came in telling us K pod was in the area as well. It was a wonderful morning, highlighted by some wonderful vocalizations and the aforementioned breaches. We capped off the tour with a wildlife stop in the Chain Islands.

This afternoon, we had both covered boats out in Haro Strait to view the 3 different pods of resident orcas. On the Orca Spirit, we travelled north of Kellet Bluff where we found a large group of J, K and some L pod whales making their way north towards Vancouver. We were thrilled to get some great passes and saw several different whales, including the J16 matriline with the newest J-pod member J42. We watched some foraging behaviour and saw some percussive behaviour (tail fluke slapping). It is always a pleasure to see such a large group of whales, and we were pleased to several large groups surfacing almost in unison. After leaving the whales, we made a quick journey to Sidney Island to examine an eagles nest and then travelled through the Chatham Group of islands. Several harbour seals were lounging the afternoon away in the calm shallow waters. It was a steller afternoon!