Friday, May 16
A long way for J’s
What a superb day to be out on the water. The sun was shining, seas were calm, and it’s the first day of the year I was in shorts and t-shirt. (I’ve been waiting for this day all year!). Now all I had to do was see J-pod and it would be a “pearla” of a day!
Both of our covered boats, the Orca Spirit and the Pacific Explorer headed out this afternoon with a report of J-pod quite a bit north of Victoria, up around the Gulf Islands. We were worried they had gone a bit too far for a regular trip but we decided to chance it as we wanted to show our Southern Hemisphere passengers the biggest member of the dolphin family, the wonder that is Orcinus orca. We travelled east across the Victoria/Oak Bay waterfront into the Haro Strait and across to San Juan Island. From there we headed north up to Stuart Island where we travelled through John’s Pass (a narrow body of water between Stuart Island and John’s Island), then out into Boundary Pass and then up around the south-east corner of Saturna Island, and there, my friends, is where we came across our favourite resident orcas,-J-pod. And a very active J-pod I might add! Many a tail slap, pec slap, breach, cartwheel and some very big spyhops where they were bringing themselves almost half way out of the water.
Passengers were ‘ooing’ and ‘aahing’ at this marvellous sight, and although we could only stay with these majestic creatures a short while, our passengers from Down Under certainly impressed by their active and playful behaviour. Now it’s not everyday that you get to see a 5 tonne animal throw itself up and out of the water, so to even see a breach, or a spyhop is incredibly lucky. I like to sometimes think that they’re just showing off for us. Maybe they are…
A magnificent trip on a magnificent afternoon, with a 70 nm round trip for passengers to enjoy this great BC weather. Stick with it sunshine, I think the orcas like it when you leave the clouds behind and come out on your own.