Whales!

Yesterday we went out on my dad's boat for Father's Day. We sailed to Montague Harbour where we had lunch. There's a marine park on the island and a little ranger station which provided information about the local wildlife. They had a touch pool that they collect animals for daily (starfish, clams, oysters, crabs, shrimp, etc). It was pretty neat to watch what went on inside the pool. A big starfish came near a clam (which they eat) and the clam opened up and used its foot (yes, apparently clams have feet) it push itself away from the starfish.

On the way back home we were sailing through on of the passes and noticed a couple whale watching boats in the area. When the whale watching boats slow down, you know there's whales nearby. So we decided to wait and see what happened. Sure enough, a minute later we saw fins nearby and coming in our direction. There must have been about three dozen orcas (killer whales), even some juveniles. We maneuvered around a little bit and the whole pod ended up coming about 300 feet from our boat. They were so close we could hear the sound of their blowholes when they surfaced. I'd never seen orcas in the wild before - it was definitely very cool.