05 September 2005

08:38:09
And so we begin another day. A short walk from our hotel brings us to Victoria's inner harbour where some boats are tied up. Check out how the four boats in the middle of the photo go: small, medium, large, larger.

Also notice at the far right, the yellow Zodiac whale watching boat. In a couple hours we'll be off on one of those on another whale watching trip. But more about that later.

08:59:20
Here we see the view back across the harbour toward the parliament buildings. It would have been nice to come out and see them lit up last night but we were just too tired by the time we reached the hotel. Once you get into the hotel room at the end of a long day it's difficult to leave again.

10:13:18
Walking back through the harbour once again brings us to a closer view of the parliament buildings.

10:27:58
During out "check-in" for the whale watching tour the girl at the desk informs me that there is a fax waiting for me.

A fax?!?? For me?!?? How is that possible? How would anyone know where to find me?

Ahhhhh! The answer lies in the Nerd Schedule! Landon has a copy of the Nerd Schedule. He knows where I am at all times. And it's a good thing he does because he saves me from a flaw in my trip planning, specifically that this weekend is a long weekend in Canada and that later today, when we take the ferry back to Vancouver, there will be many other people trying to do the exact same thing. Landon very helpfully solves this problem by making a reservation for us for the ferry and then further helpfully faxes me the details about it. Thank you Landon!

11:19:20
And so we're off again on another whale watching adventure! This time our target are Killer Whales (Orcas) that tend to hang around in the strait between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

In the distance up ahead we can see the new high-speed ferry that goes between downtown Seattle and downtown Victoria in about two and a half hours. For those familiar with the Harwich-Hoek van Holland ferry you can see that the two ferries are similar.

11:20:18
Oh... actually, now that we're closer to it the similarity is limited to the principles of the boat itself. In terms of size this boat is a bathtub toy compared to the behemoth that is the Harwich-Hoek van Holland ferry.

11:31:35
As we make our way out into the Juan de Fuca Strait (or would this be considered the Georgia Strait) we approach a bank of fog. This was expected and somewhere inside one of these fog banks there are Orcas.

For those unfamiliar with fog banks out on the water, it can be a scary thing. On a day like today, with blue skies above, you suddenly run into a big patch of fog just sitting on the surface of the water and once inside you can't see more than a few metres away. It can be a bit spooky.

11:45:10
And then just as suddenly you emerge from the fog and visibility returns.

We haven't had a satellite image orientation for a while, have we? Here we see a view of the lower part of Vancouver Island and our path to visit the Killer Whales marked in yellow.

11:55:09
And so we have our first Orca photo of the day. This is my first time Orca whale watching and as such I was unprepared for how they would behave. We have seen the ways that both Humpback Whales and Grey Whales behave when feeding and how different their behaviours were from each other, and the way that Orcas feed is entirely different again and it takes a bit of time to get used to knowing where to look and (in this case) point your camera.

In this photo you can see the disturbance of the water from the Orca's dorsal fin breaking the surface. You can even see the reflection of the fin in the water. What you can't see, however, is the whale itself. You also can't see how unbelievably close to the boat the whale was. Literally any one of us could have reached over and touched it, that's how close it was.

For these whale photos I have the camera zoomed in and this first whale sighting was so unexpected and close, and me so inexperienced in Orca watching, that I simply missed the photo. The irony is that if I'd not had the camera zoomed in I would have got the picture perfectly. We'd see a nice picture of us on the boat and a Orca whale gliding by.

So, I don't have a picture of this really lucky close encounter, but in my head I can still see it, I guess.

11:55:39
Another Orca passes close by. This is actually a really good picture because you can see the white patches of the Killer Whale through the water.

12:00:28
So the Orcas having passed close by they move off to continue feeding.

12:12:54
Earlier in the trip I promised to explain the difference between "transient" Killer Whales and "resident" Killer Whales. The terms come from early study of the animals where researchers noticed that some killer whales tendered to hang around the same areas and others tended to move around - resident and transient. These terms are now out-dated, however, and the main distinction between the two types of Killer Whale is their diet. The resident Killer Whales eat mostly fish and maybe perhaps squid and other small sea creatures whereas the transient Killer Whales eat almost exclusively larger animals such as seals or sea lions, dolphins and sharks (and have even been found to eat other animals such as birds, deer, bear, moose and humans).

(There is also another type of Killer Whale that has been discovered which is known as the "off-shore" type which very little is know about since they tend to live out at sea and rarely come in toward the land.)

What is the most fascinating thing to me about the different types is that they don't recognise each other as being the same species and will not interact or mate with each other at all. The theory is that somehow during their evolution the Killer Whales were somehow separated and developed completely different eating habits.

Anyway, these whales that we are seeing today are of the "resident" variety so there's nothing to be afraid of.

12:13:34
The way that the Orcas feed is to chase schools of Salmon around and just kind of eat as they go. This means that if you stay in one spot, in the path of their motion, the entire "pod" of whales will pass by you one or two or three at a time over the course of many minutes as they follow the Salmon.

12:28:33
You can still see a bit of the fog in the distance. I am kind of glad that we aren't seeing the whales in the fog because they are very spooky and ghost-like even in daylight. It's difficult to explain without seeing it in motion but their dorsal fins just kind of silently cut like a blade out of the water in a quick flash of black and then they disappear again back into the water.

12:32:14
We manoeuvre our boat to try and get in front of the pod of Orcas once again.

12:32:18

12:32:42
We are actually (once again) really lucky in our whale watching because today there are actually three separate "pods" of Killer Whales all feeding together as a group (a "superpod"), which is somewhat rare. For us it means that there are nearly 100 Killer Whales out there for us to see and at times there are so many moving about that you sometimes don't know where you should be looking because they are all around you.

12:32:44
On the "dash" of the boat there is a booklet entitled "Orca Survey" which has pictures of the various known resident Killer Whales in this area so our boat captain is able to identify many of them to us by name.

12:32:53
And what would a day be without another terrible photo of me?

12:33:46
This is probably a good time to share with you the way you can tell the difference between a male and a female Orca. Now, I am no expert but from what I know the one on the left is a male and the one on the right is a female. You can tell from the shape of their dorsal fin. Males have a more triangular fin whereas females have a sort of rounded curved back fin.

12:34:06

12:36:23
One of the whales out here today is the one that was filmed for the movie Free Willy (not the one in the tank, the one that they said was Free Willy in the wild). And I think it was this one right here, if I am not mistaken.