Saturday, October 20

The morning trip saw us head South from Victoria to an area where we have observed humpbacks feeding over the last couple of weeks. The first stop and scan of the area found no whales, but we did see groups of Stellar Sea Lions swimming on the surface. We turned to the East and stopped off at Race Rocks to look at the various marine life occupying the shoreline then carried on towards the area we had checked at the beginning of the trip. This time we came across 4 humpbacks, 3 together and one foraging alone. We could hear their breathing, and saw them surface a number of times. We also saw the underside of the tail flukes, providing us with good opportunities to observe how the individual whales are identified. We even managed to have a bit of fun with Corey, one of our naturalists, in using him as a comparison (or not!) to the humpbacks!

The afternoon trip focused on Haro Strait to the East of Victoria. After an hour of travelling we came across Superpod, all 3 of the resident Orca pods J, K and L. We were just off Sidney Island and the whales were all around us with Spy hops, tails slaps, porpoising and breaching behaviours. We saw the white patches of 2 whales under the water and followed them going under us from one side of the boat to another. The Orcas were active and playful, with some activity which looked like they were also hunting for salmon. One individual surfaced right beside the boat without any warning, giving one woman on the boat a bit of a fright!