It was a moody and overcast afternoon as we headed out to sea. We turned our attention southward where we had caught wind of an orca sighting in the Southern Gulf Islands. We picked up the pace and started cruising along.

None of our whales have trackers or tags on them which can dramatically change how long we need to travel trip to trip. Sometimes we are lucky and we find them very close to home port - sometimes we have to go a bit further away. You never know until you get out there where our wild whales will be travelling! Today was the latter though, and we had to go on a bit of an adventure before we found our orca. We zipped down Trinchomali Channel, all the way down to the southern part of Salt Spring Island. Once we located them they were hugging the shoreline, potentially scoping the rocks for a meal.
Once we got into position we started snapping photos to identify who we were with. We ID’d these whales as the T049As:

T049A Nan ♀ (1986)
T049A3 Nat ♂ (2011)
T049A4 Neptune ♂ (2014)
T049A5 Nebula ♀ (2017)
T049A6 Charlie II ♂ (2022)

The pod was busy bouncing between harbours while we observed them. They started rounding the tip of Salt Spring Island near Nose Point before entering Long Harbour. They weren’t in here for long though! They quickly dipped into the harbour, checked out a couple of boats, and then dipped back out and around the corner to the next harbour. The T049As are notorious harbour crawlers - members of the pod have been seen in Comox Harbour, Victoria Harbour, and Nanaimo Harbour!
While we thought the next cruise through Ganges Harbour was going to be equally calm, that wasn’t the case! The pod members ended up picking up speed and surfacing much faster. This was likely because they located a seal and were attempting to hunt it amongst the moored boats. While we didn’t see the outcome ourselves, we wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to catch a late supper before they left the harbour and continued on their way!

Two of our boats also located a pair of humpbacks near Stinky Rocks. These two were identified as “Professor X” (BCX1965) and Yakima (BCX2182). They were fluking and travelling, and briefly were also seen pec-slapping.
Besides whales, we also saw quite a few other animals too! There were plenty of Harbour Seals snoozing away on the rocky shores of Stinky Rocks and the Miami Islets. As per usual, our Steller sea lions were busy yelling at each other as they fought for the best nap places on the tip of the rocks. We also saw the resident River Otter family enjoying a group grooming session at the docks as well!

Please enjoy the trip photos taken by Marine Naturalists Cheyenne Brewster, Aly Kohlman, and Hayleigh Hilbert.