2012 May 8 | The Captain's Whale Blog!

Tuesday May 8, 2012 2:30 pm Trip

The afternoon trip headed North up to Battleship Island where we encountered a very spread out J-pod !!! The animals were almost spread right across Haro Strait… Our first encounter was with J16 (Slick) and her offspring, J26 (Mike), J36 (Alki) and J42 (Echo) !!! The whales were fishing hard as they were doing very long dives as they swam Northwest towards Mandarte Island. Halfway through our visit with the animals, L87 (Onyx) made a surprise visit with us. Always great to see him cruising with his new found J-pod family L87′s mother passed away back in 2005 and was soon adopted by K-pod for the next 5 years. Then, in 2010, he started hanging out with J-pod and has been there ever since. Near the end of the tour, the whales started grouping together as they swam past South Cod Reef on their way to Sidney Spit !!! Over the years I have only seen J-pod take this route a few times… Very strange place for the Residents ??? We departed scene at 1700 hrs. as the whales were still swimming Northwest towards the town of Sidney. On the way home the winds came up to 35 kts. on the Victoria waterfront with seas of 4-5 feet. Very exciting