Sea kayaking with orcas is up close and personal

By Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review Posted September 23, 2008

While some people are content to simply watch killer whales, sea kayakers have a yen to experience them.

The payoff for investing a few days and a little muscle power can be huge, as another eclectic group of adventurers learned this summer in the fabled orca waterways off northeastern Vancouver Island.

From the cozy cocoon of a kayak cockpit, the paddlers felt the forceful channel currents that govern the movements of salmon and the orcas that prey on them. View Photo Journal

Carrying gear beyond the high tide line let them feel the sea-polished stones that lure an orca to rub its 6-ton body against the beach much as a cat soothes itself against the family room couch.

Camping along orca waters provided 24-hours-a-day to see, hear and understand orcas and the rest of their marine environment.

Paddling slowly along beds of bull kelp, kayakers looked into the clear waters at sea cucumbers, urchins and, when the sea stars fell into perfect alignment, a few of them looked into the eye of a 20-some-foot killer whale cruising a few yards under their 18-foot kayaks.

The extraordinary thing about this six-day sea-kayaking expedition is that it was comprised of ordinary people.

A librarian, a marketing specialist, a physical education instructor, a retired fireman, an ultra-sound technologist and a Disneyland maintenance specialist none of whom had more than modest fair-weather paddling experience were in a group taking bold strokes beyond their comfort zone.

Bobbing like a cork in a kayak, half under and half above the surface of the sea, Californian Janet Zuhse pointed to cruise ship in the distance steaming down the Inside Passage from Alaska.

“That was my other option for this vacation,” she said with a sigh. “And I chose a kayak?”

“I’d do just about anything for a chance to get close to an orca,” said Michelle Laferriere of Florida as she warmed up and sipped wine by a driftwood fire after a rainy day of paddling.

Three guides from Coeur d’Alene-based Sea Kayak Adventures provided the boats, gear, experience and instruction. With this measure of security, the group ventured through Johnstone Strait, a 2-mile wide, 50-mile-long glacier-carved channel.

The company enables paddling novices to defer the skills of reading complicated tide and current charts and monitoring weather radio.

When a storm leaves the strait awash in whitecaps, the guides know which islands provide calm waters.

This was far more than a paddle trip from one point to another.

This trip had no mother ship, so everyone had to pack a portion of the group food and equipment along with personal gear into the roomy and stable tandem kayaks.

The group learned kayaking skills, and how to leave no trace of their visit.

Paddling for about four hours a day provided a balance for exploration by kayak and by foot.

Killer whales were tops on everybody’s learn-about list. And we were disappointed. They both teased us from far away by blowing plumes of mist and by getting up close.

“Keep watching and listening,” guide Serina Bain reminded the trippers each day as they paddled, and each evening at camp.

Paddling through this marine paradise was a mesmerizing adventure even without whales. Dall’s porpoises, seals and sea lions were constant companions. Oyster catchers and marbled murrelets winged past.

The paddlers often ventured out on foot to explore beaches, tide pools and the rainforest.

Driftwood campfires brightened the evening conversation.

One night, for those willing to venture out at 11 p.m. in the envelope of total darkness, Bain led a short trip so paddler’s could thrill at marine bioluminescence.

With each stroke, phosphorescent plankton gave the illusion of molten metal dripping off their paddles and swirling by the boats like a million underwater camera flashes.

Back on shore, one tripper stayed up long after the others had drifted to sleep in their tents, skipping rocks on the water. With each rapid-fire set of splashes, Tinkerbelle seemed to be tapping her magic wand to create a necklace of little sparkling explosions in the sea.

The real magic began on the fifth day.

Camped on a rocky point along the strait, the group had just finished another delicious dinner when they heard whales blowing in the distance. Two humpbacks. They came within a hundred yards of shore. Cool.

Soon, more blowing could be heard. A pod of orcas including a big bull, cruised past somewhat randomly 200-300 yards off shore.

When they disappeared around the bend, the kayakers cheered and gave each other high fives. A few even headed to their tents, satisfied.

Fifteen minutes later, Bain yelled, “Their coming back! They’re right on shore.”

The big male had paired with a female. Like two lovers holding hands and strolling on a beach, they swam virtually touching each other, surfacing in a perfect rhythm. First the female would blow, then the male. They would duck underwater only 20 or 30 feet before repeating, over and over as they paralleled the shore.

Several of the paddlers had scrambled down the rock outcropping and stood at water’s edge as some younger orcas cruised by just below their feet.

One whale turned on its side, trained an eye on the slack-jawed onlookers and flapped a pectoral flipper at them.

Another orca slapped its tail flukes on the surface four or five times as it went by.

These socially developed and highly intelligent marine mammals were clearly putting on a show.

Tears dripped from the Floridian’s eyes.

Darkness finally drove everybody to the tents, giddy, fulfilled, and without a clue this was just a warm up.

Mirror-smooth seas and sunshine greeted the kayakers for their last day of paddling and return to Telegraph Cove.

The Chinese Olympic Committee could not have planned a more thrilling finale.

Out of nowhere, orcas appeared in the distance, porpoising and exhaling with booming sighs.

“They’re coming right at us,” somebody called.

Following whale-watching rules, Bain told the paddlers to raft the eight kayaks together in a kelp bed. While a commercial whale-watching vessel idled in the distance, the pod of killer whales soon was milling around the kayaks. One orca was flipping kelp into the air with its flukes.

Then, as though the kayaks were an orca magnet, another group of five killer whales could be seen coming right at the paddlers from two miles across Johnstone Strait.

In the next several minutes, the dorsal fins got bigger and bigger. They sliced like knives through the sea surface directly at the paddlers.

About 100 yards away, the whales dove. Surface ripples melted away. Everyone stopped breathing.

A few dozen tons of fins, muscle and teeth torpedoed under the suddenly small and unsubstantial shells of fragile fiberglass. Then the orca’s blew the paddlers’ minds, surfacing one by one around them.

“It doesn’t happen like that every time,” Bain said later, after everyone’s heart rate had slowed to a purr. “But it will never happen to people who don’t make the effort to be out here.”