Olivia Ellman | M/V Kestrel | July 19th, 2025 | 2:00 PM
Soon after returning from our morning trip, we were back on the water and ready to search for more wildlife. Not much had changed regarding new whale reports in our travel range, so we decided to travel north once again. We transited past the south side of Spieden Island, and eventually found some harbor seals resting along the shoreline. There were multiple seal pups, and it was amazing seeing them in this brief time with their moms before they will be on their own in a few weeks. Soon after this encounter, we got word from some other boats that the T123s, the Bigg’s Killer Whales we had seen earlier, had been traveling faster into Saanich Inlet. We wanted to make sure we caught up with these whales, so we picked up speed and pushed to the north west. We made it past Turn Point and across the Canadian border, and continued towards the ferry terminal north of Sidney in Swartz Bay. Once we got past this, we turned south into Saanich Inlet and began the final step of the journey to reach the whales. This was such a stunning area that I had never been in before, so we had a beautiful, glassy ride in between tall forested peaks of Vancouver Island on both sides. As the inlet continued to narrow, we eventually saw a boat ahead of us that was with the whales, and as we slowed down we soon got glimpses of T123A Stanley alongside his mom and sisters. The family was traveling pretty tight together, and we had to travel on the opposite side of the channel from them to make sure we maintained our distance. The group disappeared on a bit of a longer dive, and when they surfaced again had split up with Stanley a bit closer to us and the other three close to shore further away from us. They continued further down the inlet, eventually reaching a point where it was too narrow for us to follow alongside them. We continued viewing them from further away, and were excited to see them all reunite and show off with a few splashes! As they remained in the narrow area and weren’t picking up speed, we soon enough had to begin traveling north to start our trek back to Friday Harbor. It was awesome to travel through such a beautiful part of Canadian waters that I had never been to before, and get to see these whales so much at the surface. While we had to travel quite far today, it was definitely worth it to spend time with one of my favorite killer whale families in British Columbia.