Jacklyn Loewy lives in beautiful Vancouver, Canada
Jacklyn Loewy lives in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. During spring break last year she went to Jepther Point, by Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. She says, ” Our group arrived at Jepther Pt in the late afternoon. We unpacked the kayaks, set up the tents, set up our kitchen and tarp. We were finally ready to relax and enjoy the nice weather. We heard a loud splash echo off from somewhere so we looked out scanning the water but we saw nothing. A few minutes went by and we heard another splash but this splash was more like a slap. One of the women in our group jokingly suggested “Wouldn’t it be fabulous if it was a pod of ocra and they were swimming over to us”. Well, no sooner had she said that when we realized she was right !!! “Oh, my God!”, they are coming over here. Well, come they did.
There was an Island in front of us (pretty big) and the orcas came from around both sides. It was amazing. They were breaching, tail slapping and they were headed right for us. The beach we were on was very steep and had many flat levels. The pod had maybe 30 whales. Several whales started to rub themselves on the steep pebble beach. We could hear them singing. Because the beach was so steep we were able to position ourselves very close , maybe 15 feet away. The whales stayed with us for about 30 minutes going back and forth. The ones closest to the shore were mothers and babies. The mothers were swimming along the beach with their baby in between them and the beach. Once in awhile it looked like they were putting their heads up on the shore. We were running on the beach along side of them. A few of the whales had (what I thought) was eye contact with us. They stopped swimming when they did this. We decided not to get too close as we didn’t want to be mistaken for seals wearing little yellow booties.
At one point 2 sea lions stuck their heads out of the water at the same time, their direction focused on the whales that were maybe 20 feet away from them. “I think they might have found dinner,” my husband said. The orcas paid no attention whatsoever to the sea lions The sea lions then turned to each other as if to say “hmm” and down they went. There was so much expression in The large males orcas started slapping their tails on the water and the whole herd disembarked.
This was the most amazing experience of my life.”
