Our passenger’s first glimpse of orca today was as soon as we hit the hotspot by the large male, El Notcho! Following closely was the adult female Cookie and her now rather large calf Oreo was there for the fun too! They began patrolling the hotspot in the hopes of a meal when suddenly a beaked whale surfaced right next to the boat! A few quick blows and back to depths it went, crew couldn’t beleive their eyes that this lucky whale managed to surface without the orcas noticing!!
This pod then joined together with another family pod which contained multiple small calves still showing the tell-tail sign of an orange tinge. Their parents make it look easy when coming up for a breath but the little tackers seem to try so hard to be boosted out of the water, taking a sneaky glance at the vessel while above water.
Over the duration of the day we also had three species of Albatross glide past the vessel, one of those being the Wandering Albatross which looks like a small seaplane coming in to land on the ocean’s surface.
Interrupting our orca-watch was more bird action as two shear-waters were squawking over a small chunk of squid! The mini tentacle momentarily hanging out of one of the birds beaks was a “dead” giveaway, but in the end both birds were too busy fighting with each other that the food, now in the water, sunk out of their reach.
As the afternoon sun beamed down on us the orca became rather playful and set off a chain reaction of slaps. A family pod up ahead began whacking the water with their tails which set off Nibbles and his lady friend, who both by now had cruised on over to the vessel. These two were upside down pectoral and tail slapping and swimming in sync with each other. Nibbles became upright again but the female continued right across our bow, still belly up showing off her beautiful black and white tummy patterns. Lovely send off from our favourite friends!
See you when we do it all again tomorrow!
