With the thin rains that have gripped Victoria for the past 20 hours letting up, I took a welcomed reprieve from my studies to go for a run. There is always something very pure and refreshing about a run after a long rain. Nature ignores the constant presence of humans and all too often shows its face.
My normal circuit of running through Beacon Hill Park and along the sea routinely allows for some good encounters with the islands wild, but usually its just foul or the odd ground squirrel that I encounter. Monday morning I encountered the regulars- Mr. Squirrel, Mr. Blue Heron, a few families of ducks.
But as I made my way to the same spot that I had proposed to Alissa a few months ago. I spotted what seemed to be a few Killer Whales just a few hundred meters off the coast.
What had first seemed like a few turned into many. In shear amazement, I stopped running and just stared. One of the large mansions that overlooked the ocean had a few whale watchers on a deck. I invited myself up and joined in the coffee drinking and whale watching through high powered telescopes and pricy binoculars.
It was nice but so unnecessary. The whales were so close that the details of their dorsal fins and white and black patchwork could be seen just as easily with the naked eye. Either way, these well-to-do of Victoria informed me that the whale with the enormously large dorsal fin was a male from the J-pod. They educated my po' praire self about how the pods are named by letter, how there are resident killer whales, how they had rarely seen whales off this stretch of coast, how they had never seen them this close, how they had never seen them traveling so slow, and how they had never seen so many altogether like that.
I spent a good hour or so on these friendly people's deck and out on the rocks just watching the whales. They seem as if they were in no big hurry with nothing too important to do. Instead of going out to sea they swam around the bay. There was something beautifully peaceful about the sound of the breath shooting like a geyser out of the water.
One time, I had counted 18 dorsal fins at surface (there was likely more under water). It turns out that there were 3 different pods mingling together. This whale watching blog claims that J,K,and L pods formed a 'Superpod'!' Click here to check out their photos of this rare event just meters of the Victoria's coast.
Later as the whales drifted into the distance, I followed them, running beside them until muscles were sore and it was time to turn back home.
