CWR encounters three families of Bigg’s

EncSummary: Mark received a call at 0733 from a colleague who had just seen a group of killer whales heading west off of Ross Bay on Victoria’s waterfront. He got into motion and made his way to town to mobilize Mike 1, leaving the dock by 0810 to relocate them.

After a quick scan from the mouth of the harbour and no sign of any fins or blows, Mark headed southwest toward Race Rocks slowly and stopped for another binocular scan close to 5 nautical miles from where the whales had been spotted an hour ago. With the strong ebb current, Mark felt they could be close to 7 nm from Ross Bay if they hadn’t stopped to predate.

An RCMP patrol vessel raced past him as he was having his second binocular scan and a few minutes later Mark noticed them stop a couple miles to the south so he stared in their direction. Sure enough, there were westbound dorsal fins near their vessel!

Mark worked his way toward the distant blows and fins as the RCMP departed the whales and continued on their own patrol. Mark soon reacquired a group of perhaps 7-10 individuals, including one young sprouting male, a few cows and juveniles with a couple of young ones which appeared to be less than two years old. He was able to determine that he was looking at a group of ten individuals; the T036As, less the A1s, along with the T086A1s and T124A4s. T036A2A was born last year and T124A1A was the other youngster, born in 2024, who could actually be T124A4’s second kid. It was originally thought to belong to her sister, T124A1, but it has been traveling with T124A4 and thriving since it was two weeks old. The young sprouter male present was 11-year-old T036A3.

Mark paced this group of four mothers and their kids for the next half hour while they meandered southwest for Race Rocks before ending the encounter and returning to Victoria. No predation was observed.