From boat: Orca “Tea Party” – 14.07.2025

Now i finally got the motivation to come back to this blog and post more stuff from this summer. It happened a lot since my last post on 4th of August – but more on that later. Back to Summer of 2025:

Still in the victoria/nanaimo area i wanted to do another whale watching boat trip. I very much liked the moment on the day before, where the orca was dipping out, but in the 3 hours of whale watching there wasnt much more exiting activity on that day, since that small whale family was busy hunting. I just had the felling: I wanna see more of them 😀

Anyways, I spontaneously booked another boat trip with Ocean Eco ventures out of Cowichan Bay. And that time was very awesome.

Not long after we went out, our marine biologist guide told us, that we would be heading to a “orca tea party” going on outside the Vancouver harbour area. Since all the firm are communicating they luckily pass on such information so that everyone can be a part of that. The West Coast also has an App for collecting sighting Info called “Ocean Wise Whale Report”. I still use that App back home in Germany sometimes to see what going on in the Canadian waters right now 😀

But what the hack is an orca tea party? Apparently thats once a month, where multiple familys of orca come together…well…mainly to mate and supposedly also to share hunting info and skill.

It wasnt hard to tell that there was much going on under water, since the whales practically flew and rushed through the surface (although noone did a classic full breach) – we saw lots of tail splashing and even one “pec(torial) slap”, at least the guide called it that. And some of that even with beautifull Mount Baker in the background. I really regreat now, i dont have a better camera/lens.

On the way back we saw a big group of harbour seals – cute!

One note: I actually didnt wanna do this boat trip, but the one from this company that would start further north. My Plan was to spread out my watching area, since I believe that would higher my chances to see more different whales/actions/…Anyway some bad wheather conditions cancelled the northern trip which is why they booked me to the one in Cowichan Bay again.