Cascadia set sail on a beautiful sunny Thursday morning, eager to find some whales. The sun was hot and we welcomed the small splashes as we traveled around Jack point and went through Dodd’s Narrows. As we traveled we thought it may be a long day, as there had not been any recent reports of whales, but we were only out half an hour when we came upon a tall dorsal fin sinking into the waves.

We stopped the boat and waited to see where the fin would emerge. We spotted it once more, an thought we may have a lone male. We quickly posted to the Whale Report app to inform any passing tankers or ferries that there were whales present, and that’s when we spotted a second fin in the distance. These whales were taking longer dives and quiet far spread, but slowly making their way together.

After a few good photos we realized our first whale was Judy, T49A2 and the second fin was Noah, T49A1. Noah and Judy had entertained us the afternoon before on the other side of Gabriola. After we left them we had heard they had gone through Dodd’s narrows and headed south, but we didn’t expect to find them so close almost 24 hours later.

We traveled with Noah and Judy for an hour as they zig zagged up the coast of Ruxton island before heading through the pass and aiming for False Narrows.

After we left the orcas we traveled through Gabriola pass to find some seals hanging out of Saturnina island. These seals were sunning themselves in the early afternoon, pups cautiously watching our boat and we even witnessed some splashing between adults in the water, indicating there was probably some mating behaviour happening.

After our time with the seals we headed south to a Buoy where 2 female Stellar Sea lions were sun tanning. One of them had some blood dripping from their whiskers, so they likely had just finished lunch and were taking an afternoon cat nap.

After leaving our sleeping sea lions we headed down through Porlier Pass and back north through the gulf islands As we traveled through Dodd’s Narrows again we came across Noah and Judy, who had traveled through False Narrows and were now headed around the North end of Gabriola. We didn’t stop long, as the wind was at the right angle that we were getting a refreshing shower. So we headed back to the harbour where we were surprised by a River otter playing on the docs next to our boats.

June 24th - The T49A Brothers Again

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