O Canadaaaa, you have the resident orcas in your waters and we are coming to see them! North out of the harbor, past Yellow Island (hello, plump harbor seals!), along Spieden Island (any Mouflon sheep?), around Flattop Island, across to Waldron Island (shy harbor porpoises) and across the Haro Strait (and the US/Canadian border) to Saturna Island. And what did we find? The largest of the dolphin (odontocete) species: killer whales!
Upon arriving to the scene, passengers saw three whales off our port, with another one off our bow and more coming from the east at our starboard. A large male was swimming behind us about 5oo yards in the shipping channel. He seemed to be the one to rev things up in the pod; this male gave two full clear-the-water breaches before resorting to some tail slaps as a tanker ship was about to pass through southbound. Word in the pod must have spread that it was active time, and multiple orcas--including several precocious calves--began breaching, tail slapping, peduncle throwing and upside down tail slapping repeatedly. And then again. And then some more! This continued for at least thiry minutes and was still going on intermittently when we had to leave for home port. Our hydrophone (underwater microphone) indicated that it was a very spread out and vocal resident whale (salmon-loving/eating) pod.
Along the way home, we spotted four bald eagles; one came flying down for the classic fish-grab-with-talons-out but at the last minute decided not to. Did his fish food item dive out of sight or did it not measure up as a worthy meal?
Serena, Naturalist
San Juan Safaris