Orca!

Had an amazing day yesterday. The morning started off pretty foggy but Manuel, Kate and I went out on the boat. On the passage out to find a sperm whale I spotted a few seals playing in the water, and around 20 dusky dolphins swam past the boat perhaps moving away from some orca that had been spotted that morning north of the peninsula. We managed to find Tiaki, the same sperm whale we tracked a few days ago and stuck with him for six or seven dives. We got some really interesting observations including some clicking at the surface, and most of his dives were over a sea mount 874m deep with the surrounding canyon around 1000m.

Sperm whale fluke sequence

Heading back to South Bay the low cloud lifted and the sun came out. The orca from the morning were reported to be on the south side of the peninsula, close to South Bay so we kept an eye out and managed to spot a few! One of the whale watching boats moved in for a look and two orca (a youngish female and a juvenile, I think) checked out their boat before heading over to us. They seemed pretty curious and came right up to the back of the boat, close enough to touch and I managed to get some good pictures. There also appeared to be another mother and calf, and another adult female around which we spotted but they didn’t come so close. That’s the first time I’ve seen them in the wild and they were really awesome to see!