August 22nd

A truly magical morning. We headed out into Johnstone Strait through a thick blanket of fog and switched off our engine as we approached the shore line of Hanson Island. We dropped the hydrophone into the water and waited, within minutes the sound of blows could be clearly heard as an orca materialized out of the fog in front of us. We watched as she foraged close to the shore and was then engulfed back into the fog, leaving us once more to listen to her blow and underwater vocalizations. It felt unreal just sitting and absorbing the limited world around us listening to the distant calls of shore birds mingled in with the sounds of the waves breaking and the blows of the nearby orcas. What seemed like an age passed in just a few minutes as the fog started to thin, slowly revealing more of our surroundings. The rest of the 8 hour tour was just as mystical as we encountered Dall's porpoises and then later a group of Pacific white-sided dolphins as they mobbed the resident orcas for food scraps. The Afternoon was spent surrounded by the A11's, a family of 9 resident orcas (the most famous being Springer who was adopted by this group after being orphaned in 2002). We sat watching transfixed as the orcas foraged, snoozed and socialized then we slowly made our way through the islands into Blackfish Sound were we observed an humpback whale feeding before we headed home.
The MV Cetacea also had an awesome afternoon tour which was spent with the orcas just off Robson Bight as well as encountering bow-riding Dall's porpoises on the way home.