Locomotoring

It will be underwhelming to just say that I loved every minute of this four hour trip. It was a thrill of a lifetime, although wish me luck, I want to have many such thrilling adventures in my life. A weekend trip to San Juan Island materialized the dream of seeing the orcas up close.

Before the story, we have to start with the confusing terminology – killer whales. A – Orcas are not whales, they are largest members of dolphin species. B- Some of them might be whale killers, but not in our neck of the woods. Here in our pacific northwest, the resident orcas exclusively eat chinook, the fattiest salmon. The transient orcas eat marine mammals like harbor seals and porpoise. They eat what their grandmother taught them to. Frankly, their persnickety eating habits remind me of some members of my own family!

In the language of Haida, orcas are called Sgan (sometimes written as Sgaana or SGaana). “The word for killer whale in Haida is “Sgan” which means “supernatural,” and also “the chief of the underworld.” In mythic times, killer whale was chief of the underworld. They say that when you go underwater to visit the territory of the killer whales, it’s no different from being on land, except that because you’re in their world, you see them as humans.” — Robert Davidson, internationally acclaimed Haida artist

Back to the story. My first interest in orcas coincided with my interest in the gentle humpback whales. I am now convinced that humpback whale is my spirit animal. These two species are not friends so, and therefore, my position on orcas is not particularly friendly. That is not to say I don’t admire the grandmother orcas. One of my favorite wildlife program is The Wild with Chris Morgan. Listening to the episode, “Evesdropping on Orcas: Love, Grief and Family“, I have grown to appreciate how close they to human kind. I am not known to be fond of humans either.

This was my first vacation plan where I let chatGPT navigate. I was craving for a new experience and time was tight. Among other more familiar destinations, chatGPT suggested San Juan Island. I hadn’t heard of San Juan before but as soon as I realized the wildlife viewing opportunity, I was sold. Like the stars, I am increasingly starting to feel the acute loss of wild life viewing opportunities. Our species are crowding others out. We are heating up the planet. We are occupying way too many frequencies in sound and light spectrum with our technologies. Couple of years ago, we were in the Alexander Archipelago of Alaska and there is no denying that the archipelagos of the pacific west coast are magical. The Salish archipelago includes more than 400 islands and while that seems like a lot of islands to choose from, the reality of a weekend trip limits choices. We decided to fly into San Juan Island. SFO to Seattle Tac and then a small 8 seater plane to the island. More on the 8 seater in another story.

When it comes to wildlife viewing, above all else, you need luck. The best you can control is to choose guides who are passionate about wild life, not just in spirit like me, but actually understand the animal’s behavior. We signed up with Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching company for a half day trip.

Barely 30 minutes out of San Juan into Sailish sea, we had found our pod. Our guides knew this pod, it was transient T37A. Transient is not a good name but like killer whale, the name has stuck. Transients, like the residents, belong to the Pacific North West. A better name for them is Biggs orcas, named after the father of modern orca research, Dr. Michael Biggs, who studied them and found that they exclusively eat marine mammals and never fish. The transients, unlike the resident orcas, are less social, and consequently prefer smaller pods. Our pod was composed of a mother and her two young ones. Orcas live about as long as humans do. This mother (T37A, Volker, born 1994, named after the researcher Volker Deecke) was thirty years old. Her older child (T37A2, born 2009), a boy orca, Inky, was sixteen and the younger one (T37A4, born 2015), a girl named Crinkle, was only 10. Volker is known to have had at least 3 more children (T37A1, T37A3, and T37A5).

Our boat stayed with the pod the whole time thereby allowing us a chance to learn to recognize them by their fins, watch Inky hunt a porpoise and play with it, and finally, the family snacking on it. Rest in peace little porpoise. One of the nice things about an archipelago is that the sea isn’t choppy. I could walk about the boat with the binoculars glued to my face. My significant other, the photographer in the family, did not bang his big lens into the surfaces of the boat. We also had the advantage of clouds resulting in minimal reflections. At times, the sea shined liked mercury and the beautiful black bodies of these orcas presented a stark contrast. And since we were just keeping up with the pod, the boat was quiet, and we could hear them breathe.