Hat Trick

Here I am in Ucluelet, BC, in the middle of another amazing summer as a sea kayak guide. Between the gorgeous sandy beaches from here to Tofino and the Broken Group Islands where I guide, I think I am pretty much in one of the most beautiful places imaginable.

Yesterday I had the whale show of a lifetime. Kevin, another guide, and I were taking a group of 7 on a Broken Islands day trip. We and the kayaks were loaded on Gary's boat, Ms Judy, and we were looking for whales enroute. It is quite common to see gray whales and only a bit less common to see humpbacks. Yesterday, however, we saw orcas for only my second time out here. There were four of them headed for a group of rocks where seals were sunning themselves. They swam around there for about 15 minutes, and I was pretty sure they were having a bit of a meal. As they swam away from the reef they started lob-tailing, which means they were slapping their tails on the water. Then they all started to breach multiple times! It was really amazing; I was literally shouting with delight. The unfortunate thing was that my camera battery was dead by they time they started doing these amazing things, so I only have some mediocre pictures of when they were swimming around the reef.

Just as the other whale watching boats were showing up the orcas seemed to finish their celebration and started to head offshore. At this point we left them and headed straight for the drop off beach, when we encountered a humpback whale in our path, who then swam only about 2 metres from the boat. So it was a hat trick, all three whale species in an hour. Really quite amazing.

It continued to be a top-notch day trip. The wind was calm, air was warm, and it was low tide so we were able to see lots of intertidal life. Sometimes the smallest things in the sea can be just as amazing as the largest, and we saw the whole range today. I honestly never get tired of being out on the ocean. I'm not tired of watching whales yet, and I'm not tired of looking at sea stars. Nothing is ever the same on the ocean. The more time I spend out here and the more familiar I become with my surroundings, the more layers of life are revealed.