The Whales of Washington - Killing it!

It’s Friday and time to go on another whale watching trip. In the car the other interns and me talk about the things we would wish to see today. ‘Killer whales!’ is my first reaction. Charles really want to see a breaching humpback and Haley then decide that she wishes for a humpback that breaches over some killer whales, and from there on out we lose track of reality. But I feel good about this trip and once we are on board it didn’t take long before the captain says he wants to leave the humpbacks that we have been looking at behind because there are ‘other animals’ spotted by another boat. Hayley and me look at each other with the same thought… who knows.. could be killer whales! And it turned out to be these big, beautiful, black and white coloured dolphins we were hoping for.

We spotted the large dorsal fins (up to 1.8 meter) moving fast in a certain direction. In the distance we can see many birds accumulating in one place, that is often a sign of a bait ball underneath the surface. It works like this: birds mean there is fish, fish means that there are sea lions and seals, and seals attract orca’s, especially the marine mammal eating type that we are seeing; transient killer whales. You should have heard the scream of excitement Haley produced when we saw the big male lifting his tail out of the water, and again, and again, only to eventually see it tossing a seal all the way up in the air! Between all the birds I could not see the seal flying in the air, but I saw the big splash it made when it came back down after a few seconds. It was an absolutely ‘national geographic’-like scene, and we were so lucky to have witnessed it. So now you start thinking: ‘wow, I wish I was there to see that..’ and of course I thought of you while being on the boat ;) so I made a video.

You have to forgive me the bad quality, great distance between our boat and the action, and the sometimes unsteady camerawork. I tried… I have never made a video before so it is nothing fancy. You can find it in the video section of this blog. Best to watch it on a computer or laptop in full-screen mode, because of the distance. 
 

One thing that really stands out in my point of view in this video is that you can see how many boats are around these whales. It is a busy waterway and there are quite a few boats actively looking for these endangered species. Good? Bad? Definitely interesting to think and discuss about.