Monday, September 15th

Another beautifully flat calm morning on the Salish Sea as the Orca Sirit headed out with Captain Brad and naturalist Tim, eager to find all things marine mammal. We headed south east out of the harbour, then west into the Strait of Juan De Fuca, constantly searching, looking, watching for any kind of dorsal fin or spout or splash of water. We saw the triangular grey dorsal fins of many harbour porpoises, the heads of many harbours seals, the large gatherings of many marine birds feeding on schooling fish, but alas no whales. We made our way to Race Rocks where Stellar Sea Lions were certainly acting a bit “feisty” towards each other (gotta fight for that spot on the rock!) and California Sea Lions were lounging around on the steps near the ramp to the lighthouse. We were lucky enough to see three Stellar’s swimming along together, pointing their noses up towards us and getting a good ol’ look at passengers. As we hugged the shoreline back to Victoria we soaked up the sun while constantly looking for whales, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be this morning. That’s the reality of whale watching folks, and searching for wild animals, sometimes you don’t get lucky. But with the Orca Spirit Whale Guarantee, passengers are still able to come out with us on standby for free so passengers still left the dock with a smile on their face.

This afternoon’s trip headed out with a report of our resident (fish-eating orca) pods heading south down the northern end of Haro Strait. They were too far for us to get to this morning but had picked up pace over lunchtime and so passengers for this arvo’s (Aussie slang for ‘afternoon’) got to witness as 40+ orcas swam spread out down the Haro Strait. As we approached on scene you could see blow after blow of water (a whale’s breath as it exhales and spouts water into the air). Passengers got to witness family matrilines swim in unison together, calves breach, amazing vocalisations of calls, clicks and whistles, and even an older female repeatedly slap her tail fluke onto the water as a cargo ship passed by. It really did appear as though she was warning the rest of the pod that it was coming, because we had two cargo ships go north up the Strait heading to Vancouver, and both times the same female slapped her tail several times. Don’t worry folks, these orcas are very aware of cargo ships and got out of the way. In fact, people have even seen them ride the bow wave of the ships, so they must not bother them that much! As we left the scene we came across the big male orca on campus, J1 (aka Ruffles, 57 yrs), and he was swimming along with two harbour porpoise quite fast. Now these fish eating orcas don’t eat porpoise, but I think the speed that they were travelling (very fast as water was spraying off their small triangular dorsal fins) they wanted to get out of the area. Still, it was amazing to see two porpoise surface in unison and Ruffles along side them. Another great trip, and of course fantastic weather, again. What a great September so far!