Bigg’s orca on the hunt

I have about 2 external hard drives that are about 2 Terabytes each and both are quite full of 1,000’s upon 1,000’s of photos of orca and other marine mammal encounters I have experienced over the past decade.

This interaction was quite a memorable one. In order to get to where these animals were last sighted took me about 1.5 hours from Victoria, BC. The good thing was that we were the only vessel to travel that far to see them. Everyone else just told their guests there were no orca that day, which of course was a lie. That is quite common for certain companies to do in the whale watching Industry.

Two female Bigg’s Orca (mammal hunters) on the hunt in the Juan De Fuca near China Beach

This pod of orca once we did pick them up, cruised slowly beside our vessel before instantly turning into hunt mode. They found something, which I assumed was a harbour seal and made very light work of it before sharing the spoils of their late lunch before proceeding to head west towards the Pacific Ocean.

My usual 3-4 hour trip turned into a 5.5 hour trip, simply due to the long distance I had to cover just to get to where the animals were. Honestly, totally worth it and I would do it again and most probably will do it again sometime during this upcoming summer season in BC.