Orcas!

We had been sailing around the San Juan Islands for several months and had yet to see an orca. We were anchored off Pearl Island and it was my birthday. We were just getting into the dinghy to go to shore when I saw them. A pod of orcas at the entrance to Roche Harbor!

As we motored toward them, I kept telling Sean to get closer. I was a bit upset as he stayed quite far away. As it turns out, he was right. When we went into town later that day, we stopped in to talk to the staff at the Orca Outreach Center.

They told me that by law, we are to stay 400 yards away from orcas, turn off or slow the engine (>7 knots), and turn off sonar. It’s difficult to judge distance by sight, so they gave me a business card printed with an orca about a half an inch long (photo above). It said to hold the card at arm’s length. If the orca is bigger than the image of the orca on the card, you are too close. It would be difficult to see the orcas doing much that far away without zooming in on a video or using binoculars. Good to know for our next encounter!

There are two orca types in the pacific northwest: southern resident killer whales (SRKWs) and transients. The woman at the outreach center thought the ones we saw were most likely southern residents. At this time, there are only 74 of these whales left. They feed primarily on salmon and are smaller than the transient orcas who mainly eat seals.

Since the salish sea (where we are) is part of Washington and Canada, both have laws to protect the endangered SRKW population. They have whale no-go zones to keep boaters from disturbing the areas most used for feeding by the whales. Washington’s encompass the southern and western waters around San Juan Island (the island where we keep our boat during winter) and are voluntary. Canada’s are strictly enforced with hefty fines for violations. The red zones in the image below are ones in Canadian waters that we have had to purposely avoid quite a few times when visiting the surrounding islands.

In case you are wondering, the killer whales here are nice, so we don’t have to worry about them attacking our boat. The angry orcas in European Atlantic waters have been attacking sailboats and sinking some. They also have been especially picking on boats like ours, monohull sailboats with spade rudders!

Following are snippets of the videos I took of our orca encounter. I wanted to keep the original sound in the videos so you can hear them breathing, but cut out the parts that contain our “discussions” about how far back to stay from them.