Eaglewing | The Captain's Whale Blog!

June 12th 2pm trip from Poets Cove

We had a private charter this afternoon, we picked up some folks from Poets Cove on Pender Island. It was a lovely day, flat calm not more than a breathe of wind, pretty interesting weather system coming from the west with lots of rain. However we picked up on time at about 2:05pm and departed at 5:20pm with a lovely group of about 22 passengers from the Jim Pattison Auto Group. We left straight to where we knew where the action was at and that was north just south of Nanaimo. We took about an hour and 10min traveling the better part of 40 miles and arrived on scene about 3 miles north west of Thrasher Rock which is just south of Nanaimo BC. We arrived on scene and a good friend of mine from Ocean Eco Adventures in Cowichan Bay Simon Pidcock was there waiting for us to ensure that we would on scene without any issues, so thank you Simon. We arrived on scene with a group of what looked like about 15 transient killer whales inshore socializing and being very very playful and very friendly also vocalizing continuously on our hydrophone. It was probably the beest transient vocals that I have heard all season on any of our trips. They were treated with some very special experiences auditory listening to them under the water but also visually seeing them in their habitat relatively close range. It was fun to see T-20 Kwatsi, who is a large adult whale born in 1963, that makes him the oldest male orca that comes into our area. It used to be Ruffles J-1 he was born in 1951 but unfortunately he passed on a few years ago. We made our way home slightly a different route, we came down along the west side of Gabriola Island and Galiano Island and through Lizard and Curlew Pass on the back side of North and South Pender Island and went under the tressel bridge. All this making our way back to Poets Cove where we dropped everyone off at about 5:45pm it was a great trip. Lovely experience and a real friendly group. Thank you for everyone for coming out it was a real pleasure to get to know you a hopefully we can get to see you again some other time. Hope you enjoy your BBQ