July 25th proved to be yet another outstanding day out on the water (wow, I bet people are getting tired of me saying that). We first encountered the whales along the bluffs of South Pender Island up in Canada. At first I identified mostly J pod whales - J1 “Ruffles”, J19 “Shachi”, J41 “Eclipse”, J8 “Spieden”, and some of the J16’s. Then I noticed the J16’s were swimming with some of the L12’s! We continued to watch them swim toward us until they surfaced one last time and went down for a long dive. We waited for about six minutes when the whales finally popped up off our bow. They were swimming in every direction imaginable! It was almost as if they were having a conference as to what they were going to do next and no one could quite make up their minds. Then after a spell of indecision, the J’s continued to swim north while the L’s decided to go south… or so we thought. The L12’s surfaced south bound several times until they came up again and were pointed west. Then they did another long dive after which they came up and were moving slowly north again. Another long dive and they were slowly west bound. Another dive before they were porpoising south at very high speed. Wow! Can these whales make up their minds?! Not yet! Ooops, nope, no more high speed swimming, now just slowly swimming south. Yikes! Detour! School of salmon! Everyone STOP, dinner time! Ok, fishing done and moving again now in a tight group at medium speed. Nope, put on the after-burners again! High speed toward Turn Point!

BREACH!

TAIL-LOB!

BREACH AGAIN!

Usually the orcas are fairly predictable in their movements, but as you can see, today was particularly confusing! I was cracking up as I listened to Captain Ivan talk on the radio trying to relay to the other captains what the whales were doing. Every time Ivan told the other captains one thing, the whales would surface and totally rebuff his previous statements and he would have to correct himself. He was beginning to sound like an announcer at a very exciting sporting event! Wow, what an exciting day. Never a dull moment around here - oh and, in case you’re wondering, the whales decided to go south

~Katie