Date: 12-Nov-2018

Sequence: 1

Encounter Number: 100

Enc Start Time: 14:30

Enc End Time: 15:49

Vessel: Mike 1

Observers: Mark Malleson, Hanna Magnusson, Bryttni Nameth

Pods or ecotype: K pod

Location: Coyote Bank

Begin Lat/Long: 48 17.2/123 12.2

End Lat/Long: 48 14.9/123 8.7

 

Encounter Summary:

At 10:36 I received a call from Gord Rowles who spotted a large group of killer whales east of Race Rocks headed for Constance Bank. He figured they were southern residents by the large group size and the fact that they stormed through the aggregation of humpbacks in the area without showing any sign of interest or disturbance.
Gord decided to head out on his sailboat from Oak Bay Marina when he heard we were on the other side of town and wouldn't be able to get to the boat for close to an hour. He felt that it would be easy for us to refind them as they were charging east towards Constance Bank on a line for Trial Island.
We left the dock on Mike 1 at 11:30 and headed off towards south Trial Island. Ken Balcomb departed Oak Bay about the same time on Chimo and worked his way towards Trial Island to help the search. He turned around at the northeast edge of Constance and headed east for Discover Island when he heard that we weren't having any luck in the 2 to 3-foot short chop. We pushed well south and started going west in the event they had been pushed south in the strong ebb or had turned around. Gord had called his girlfriend Joelle to have her look through the Big Eyes to help re-sight them. At 12:11 we received a call that she saw them south south east of Constance Bank. After close to 2 hours of searching in the choppy water, we finally got into calm enough water to the east where I could make use of the Swarovski binoculars and spotted a fin in the distance which turned out to be K21. We could see that it was likely all of K pod and they were fairly spread out on Coyote Bank traveling on a line for Admiralty Inlet. We started the encounter at 14:30 and worked through the entire group as efficiently as we could knowing it would be tough to get them all with the diminishing light. We ended the encounter at 15:49.