Date: 25-July-17

Sequence: 1

Encounter Number: 57

Enc Start Time: 10:18

Enc End Time: 14:10

Vessel: Mike 1

Observers: Mark Malleson, Hanna Malleson, Pierre Magnusson, Eva Magnusson

Pods or ecotype: Lpod

Location: Papa Alpha

Begin Lat/Long: 48 12.3/123 27.5

End Lat/Long: 48 19.3/123 57.9

 

Encounter Summary:

Hanna, myself and her parents departed Victoria harbour on Mike 1 at 0900 in search of whales.
I had heard that the 19 L's that had been around the last couple of days were heard just before midnight on the LK hydrophone after being up north with J's. I decided to head towards the west in hopes they were still in range. We looped south of Race Rocks and then started heading west out the Juan de Fuca. When I heard that a couple of the whale watching boats out of Victoria were well west of Sooke and hadn't found anything I decided to turn and head east towards Dungeness in the event that they had stalled out during the night as they had a large flood to contend with. As I was approaching Papa Alpha I received a call that killer whales had been located a couple of miles east of us spread out west bound. A few minutes later we came across L103 and L123 and could see they were spread out laterally for a mile moving quickly with the building ebb current averaging 7 knots. We were able to photograph close to half of them but decided to end the encounter at 1115 and go to Sooke for a lunch break as there were a fair number of whale watch boats on scene.
We left Sooke harbour at 1340 to relocate the westbound L's and within 15 minutes spotted a whale watch boat off of Otter Point. They were still spread out but now a little over a mile with some along the shoreline at Otter Point to the furthest offshore animal, L92. They were still moving steady westbound at 5 knots when we ended the encounter at 1410 to go searching for humpbacks.