Lauren Tschirhart | August 16th, 2026 | M/V Kestrel | 10:00 am
The absolute adrenaline rush that the 10:00 am Adventure Tour was about to endure is something we did not expect when departing the dock. Our morning tour began like many of them do, with us not having a clue where the wind may take us. At this time of day, we do not often have any firm whale sightings. Although we may have a general idea of where the whales were left last night, orcas can swim over 150 miles in a day, so just because they are here one day, does not mean they will be the next.
Every morning the Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA) vessels all divide and conquer different waterways, and then we report sightings to one another. After speaking with the other captains, we decided to take an inter-island cruise through the Wasp Islands, making our way over to West Sound near Orcas Island. We spent a good hour scanning around every tiny island and shoreline, making sure we didn’t miss anything. We then headed to White Rock in Boundary Pass to view some harbor seals while we debated our next move. There were still no reports of whales close by, so we decided to head north towards the Canadian Gulf Islands. We got word that there were several humpbacks sighted just north of Mayne Island. This report was far, but if we left now we could still make it.
We zoomed north, crossing into the waters of British Columbia, aimed for Georgeson Pass. We finally made our way into the Strait of Georgia and started seeing exhales in the distance. There were at least three humpbacks visible, and we got incredible looks at two of them. Due to photo-identification, we were able to ID these whales as BCY1274 “Seltzer” and BCX1377 “Nike.” These whales are summer visitors here, and they both came up from the breeding grounds of Mexico. They have both been sighted off of Cabo San Lucas, where “Nike” also has been spotted off of Puerto Vallarta. After getting great looks, we departed these whales and started heading back towards Georgeson. Just as we were entering the passage, we heard on the radio that a large group of orcas had been seen off of Eastpoint, and they were seen being surface active! If this intel came in any later, we likely would have been too far away to make it work. Lucky for us, we were at the right place at the right time. We made a U-Turn and headed east over the north side of Saturna Island. We passed Eastpoint and started to see dorsal fins in the distance. I alerted our guests that they were about to see orcas, but warned them that we were running very late and couldn’t stay long.
As we made our way on scene, I quickly realized this was a fairly large group of whales. The T019’s had already been identified as part of the group, and we seemingly also had the T049A’s… but there had to be more. There were tons of tiny little dorsal fins breaking the surface of the water. I knew there had to be more calves than just T049A6/ Charlie II and T049A7/ Nimbus, but I didn’t have time to do any proper identification work, as we were short on time. Honestly… I couldn’t do much else other than explode into excitement. Why you may ask? These whales were just erupting with surface behaviors! We had breaching babies, tail lobbing big boys, and TONS of porpoising behavior! It was an absolute party! We unfortunately had to depart before the action ended, but we were overjoyed with what we observed. On our way back to the dock, I got word that the T035A’s had also been present for the party, totaling the number of Bigg’s Killer Whales we saw to a whopping 15 individuals!
More information about the Pacific Whale Watch Association: https://www.pacificwhalewatchassociation.com/