October 9, 2011

This afternoon, on a lovely Thanksgiving Sunday, we headed just south of Victoria to view southern resident orcas. What an incredible day, with flat calm seas and sunny skies and whales everywhere. We arrived on scene to watch the orcas and immediately noticed at least two humpback whales nearby! Our encounter with the orcas was amazing. We had a lovely visit with the J17 matriline, including Polaris (J28) and her calf. A highlight was a thrilling encounter with K26 (Lobo) and K37 (Rainshadow). The vocalizations were beautiful this fine afternoon. We even heard one whale do a "raspberry" above the water. After our orca encounter, we made the short journey to Race Rocks.

At Race Rocks, we saw some pretty spectacular predation behaviour from some Steller sea lions, eating an unidentified species of fish. After the sea lion encounter, we headed back towards the harbour but were keeping our eyes open for the humpback whales that were spotted earlier. Not too long after leaving Race Rocks, we spotted a couple of humpback whales. One of the humpback whales was "Splitfin", a humpback whale with a dorsal fin wound that has been spotted in each of the last four years. It was an incredible trip.