Orcas, Humpbacks, and a Minke

This morning we had wonderful sightings of the A12 pod of Orcas. They were not too far from home and traveling along foraging as they went. We also saw the A11 pod of Orcas as well as other A pods spread out in the Strait. When we had the chance to drop our hydrophone on a couple of occasions the vocals were quite nice. We could hear distant calls from the whales on the other side of the Strait as well as the occasional vocal and rapid click trains of Orcas that were closer to us. This afternoon we headed north to have a look at some blleen whales. We saw atleast 3 Humpback whales and a large Minke whale as well. The amount of small schooling fish in the area where these large whales were was amazing. We saw massive schools boiling at the surface and gulls and other seabirds apparently too full to feed on them which is a good sign for plenty of whale activity as it is not uncommon to see Humpbacks and/or Minkes engulf these whole schools of small fish in one mouth full like we saw today and also the other day. On the way home we saw a large Peregrine Falcon (yet another threatened species and the world's fastest animal) stooping on Red-necked Phalaropes. This is the second one we've seen this year and such a great treat to end the day with.