A fabulous tour with two humpback whales and a surprise sea otter sighting!

What a beautiful day we had and weather that turned a cloudy gray sky into shades of brilliant blues. Early in our tour in the top end of Blackfish Sound and floating on its back, a lone sea otter was sighted. It was very exciting to see this otter as they are still a rear sighting in our area. We travelled through beautiful back waterways and entered back into Blackfish Sound just as a large fluke of a humpback whale was seen disappearing beneath the waters surface and after a very long dive the whale was seen surfacing well behind us and making its way to the east. The dorsal fin and fluke looked familiar and we identified the whale as KC, born in 2002 to Houdini. Houdini was one of the fiirst humpback whales sighted off northeastern Vancouver Island after the end of commercial whaling. It is our first sighting of KC this season! We were mesmerized watching a surfacing, hearing a single trumpet, and then before we knew it, we were all thinking there had to be two whales and not one and sure enough a second whale surfaced, and we observed them swimming close beside one another as we began making our way homeward bound. The second whale has been identified by both Christie and Jackie www.mersociety.org as being BCX0380 - he/she is in Mark Malleson's catalogue of the humpbacks that have been seen off Victoria. Not ever seen off northern Vancouver Island (though based on DFO records, there is an old record of him/her in Goletas from 15 years ago!) Also seen today: dall's porpoises, stellar sea lions, harbour seals, bald eagles+++ including one in a nest, harlequin ducks, great blue herons, belted kingfishers, pacific loons++, rhinoceros auklets, marbled murrelets, pigeon guillemots and gull species. The scenic photo's posted were taken by telephoto lens and cropped.