August 9th

Today was amazing. It's hard to know where to begin! No more than 10 minutes into an 8 hour tour we came across a beautiful black bear foraging along the beach looking for tasty snacks under the rocks, then 40 minutes later we saw are fist signs of orcas. We were heading down Johnstone Strait towards Robson Bight (the ecological reserve) when we caught up with the A30's, a large family group of resident orcas who were making in the most of the calm sunny weather by sleeping their way down the strait. Things started to get exciting within minutes (as if it wasn't exciting enough already) for we had spotted at least three other groups of orcas heading up the strait toward us and the A30's! What followed can only be described as breathtaking, the SV Tuan's engine was switched off and we drifted with the currents with our hydrophone in the water listening to a symphony of calls as the four individual groups of orcas socialised and frolicked around us. It was truly amazing. Thinking it was hard to beat an encounter that was as "one-off" as this mornings, the SV Tuan cruised through the islands into Blackfish Sound were we spent the afternoon viewing humpback whales foraging and lunge-feeding though balls of herring, an event that in itself would have been truly rememberable was the perfect finale to an action packed day on the water