We started this morning with our first sighting of a single male ‘Transient’ mammal eating killer whale (Orcinus orca) T162 (DFO Transient catalogue) at around 0900. He’s a cool looking male with a big nick at the bottom of his dorsal fin. Within minutes of spotting him another group of killer whales was spotted and it ended up being some of the northern Resident killer whales including the R4s and R18s. They were a few miles south of Munro Island and we had a nice sighting watching them from the ship and the FRC was launched for photo ID to be done on the group.
Then, just after dinner this evening, we had another sighting of northern Resident killer whales in Loreto Sound, at 1830, and this group included the A11s, D9s, R4s (again!) and the R31s. In total there were 4 encounters of 34 different killer whales today!
Please note: most of these photos were taken under a DFO research permit using a Nikon D70 digital SLR camera with a 300 mm lens and have been cropped.
