July 10th 3:30 - A quartet of bull orca and a sneaky Humpback

Our 3:30pm tour had quite the time with T49A1 (Noah), T49A2 (Jude), T77C (Neftali), and T77D (Alcyon). During the morning, this quartet was travelling very fast southbound along our coast. When our open vessel Cascadia met up with them this afternoon they were lazily swimming in circles off of Snake Island, just 5 minutes from our harbour. This group decided to come and investigate our boat in a method known as ‘mugging’. They would approach the boat and then swim directly under it. They did this not once, not twice, but three times before passing us by and heading towards Pipers Lagoon.

After their exciting encounter with the 4 orca, Cascadia and company left in search of a Humpback whale. Conditions were very calm and flat, the seas were almost glass-like. While travelling along the Gabriola shoreline, they spotted a Humpback not too far off towards Entrance Island. The whale turned towards them, dove down… then vanished! This tricky humpback appeared to be doing very deep dives. After waiting a few minutes to see if it would surface, they headed off again to l

Please enjoy these photos from the encounter by Naturalist Cheyenne Brewster. We are running tours daily at 10:30AM and 3:30PM, with two different vessel options (semi-covered and open).

All whale watching regulations were followed during this encounter. Photos are taken with a telescopic lens and cropped as needed for social media.