Hoping for Orcas in Victoria

Almost five full days into my seven-day cruise in the Pacific Northwest, I still had my sights set on finding orcas. I had originally set out on the trip hoping to see both puffins and orcas, but had given up on the idea of encountering any of the seabirds, having already discovered I was a month late to see them close to land at one their major nesting sights in Oregon.

Having sailed by Washington State's San Juan Islands and passing Vancouver Island very early in the morning, I saw a humpback whale breach as the sun started to rise and we made our way up the Strait of Georgia. We soon entered Burrard Inlet, passed under Lions Gate Bridge, and steamed into Vancouver Harbor. With still no orca sightings under my belt, I decided over breakfast to book a ship excursion for the next day in Victoria, our cruise's last stop. At $160, the tour was expensive. But with the name of the creature in the tour's title - "Ocean Wildlife and Orca Exploration Cruise" - how could I fail?

We awoke the next morning already docked in Victoria, having transited the short distance from Vancouver over night. It was an easy walk to our excursion boat, the Pacific Explorer 1, operated by Orca Spirit Adventures. There it was again, the name of my obsession, prominently printed on the crews' uniforms and advertised on the side of the vessel. My gamble was starting to look like a guarantee.

Yet the thing about nature is, well, that there's so much of it, to paraphrase a television character. And the morning tour delivered just that: loads of an endless variety of nature. Starting with thousands and thousands of common murres and ending with hundreds of sea lions, we passengers witnessed lots of the wonder and beauty of the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Salish Sea, as the greater body of water is now referred.

We encountered at least five different humpback whales, each of them spouting, breaking the surface, and showing their flukes as they dived deep below us. Acknowledging they were spectacular creatures to behold and that our proximity was amazingly close, I still wondered where were the orcas. Well that is another thing about nature, it's fickle, as the shipboard naturalists reminded me.

As the sun arched higher - not too high, it was late September at 48 degrees latitude - we reached Race Rocks, the site of an Ecological Reserve. Its location in an area of high tidal currents guaranteed that an abundance of marine mammals were congregating there. Our first sightings were of harbor porpoises, one of the smallest cetaceans. We also soon saw harbor seals swimming toward one of the rocky islands. I was shamefully sanguine when one of the guides informed us that the small seal is one of the primary food sources for the area's orcas.

There were other pinnipeds too, many safely sunning themselves on the rocks, including the larger California sea lion and much, much larger Steller variety. At least one shearwater flew by and I photographed a lone sea otter swimming close to shore. In addition to the many common murres floating in the surf, sea gulls and cormorants abounded.

But no orcas. In fact, the crew was in frequent radio communication with other tour operators on the Salish Sea and there wasn't a single sighting to pursue. And at that point in the excursion, it was already time to head back to our waiting cruise ship.

But, but, but ... all I kept thinking was: the guides said we'd not see any bald eagles - they're mostly hunting salmon upriver - but I still captured a shot of one flying along the coast. Maybe there was a chance we'd still see an orca, too. Alas not during the twenty or so minutes motoring back to port, and not at all that morning. We were all soon back aboard the Ruby Princess, heading westward.

With a day and a half of sailing ahead of us before we arrived back in San Francisco, I'd keep my eyes peeled for orcas as I roamed the outside Promenade Deck. That might be the thing about humans, as Alexander pope wrote: hope springs eternal.