We are now fully in the thick of our 2024 whale watching season. This week was wonderful, we did have our first tour of the year with no whales unfortunately on wednesday, but we saw whales on 10 of the other 11 tours this week, including killer whales on all 10 of those trips!
This week we had visits from the T036, T065A, T109A2, T049A, T036A, and T046B families of killer whales. Lots of different families of orcas around this week, we hope that keeps up! Our week of killer whale encounters was highlighted by Friday afternoons tour, where we met up with the T109A2 family just along the Victoria waterfront. Immediately upon spotting these whales, we could see they were quite playful with lots of breaching and splashing! We watched in awe as this family of 4 killer whales continued the playful behavior for quite some time. But then, about 25 minutes into our encounter, the family took a hard turn to the south and went on a long dive, when they popped up about 5 minutes later, there were 9 whales! The T049A family had come out of nowhere to meet up with them. We love it when more whales show up! After the two families met up, the social behavior continued, we saw a lot of breaches, spyhops, cartwheels, tail slaps, you name it.
We also had some wonderful humpback encounters this week. But none more epic than Sunday mornings tour. After an encounter with the T046B family of killer whales, we were heading down Bellingham channel when we came across 2 humpback whales! It turned out to be the humpback whale known as “Phi” and her calf. Soon after getting there, the calf got very playful, and we got to see it breach many times, and also some spyhops, and a few tail throws from mom! It was an epic encounter.
It looks like we have lots of nice summer weather in the forecast for this coming week. We hope to see you for some adventures in the San Juan Islands!
