Orcas

Orcas have been one of my favorite creatures for a long long time. So it was immensely fun to go on a “whale watching” trip with my parents, leaving out of Orcas Island.
In August you only have a 65% chance of seeing orcas in the waters around San Juan, but K and L pod are more consistently in the waters joining the year around resident J pod. We got lucky. We saw J, K, and L, all swimming together. There are currently 83 individuals among those 3 pods (a shockingly low number to be living in the San Juans), and while there weren’t 83 orcas in the water, there were several dozen.

At first we parked the boat so far away you could barely see the fins in the distance, but we positioned ourselves luckily enough that the oracs swam towards us, and eventually 2 teenagers dove under our boat, breeching immediately on the other side, 3 feet from where I was standing. This was of course when my camera decided to turn off. (I’m still frustrated, 2 days later)

Slightly less amazing was the clutter of other whale watching trips. You can’t help but wonder if it has some sort of detrimental effect on the pods to be constantly surrounded by boats. In general the orcas didn’t seem to mind, and were clearly playing in and around the boats, often breeching directly in front of the boats. (Whales and cameras have a natural antipathy for each other, and so very little of this was caught on “film”)

Lastly, I’m puzzled by the islands insistence on calling them whales. All of the companies identify themselves as “whale watching” trips, natives (or the transplants who seem to largely run the tourist industry) refer to them as whales, but why? Orcas are much more interesting then whales. They’re giant dolphins, delphinidae not just cetacea. They sport, and play, and do belly flops, and chase fish in crazy energetic swishes, and provide a high energy, but other worldly chatter through out. I love our California grays, and their long slow songs, but they’re a bit stately.