On Sunday morning John and I heard reports on the radio of a large group of killer whales off Lennard Light. We jumped into the boat and headed out off the Glory Hole to meet up with the fleet and the whales. We knew this large group of killer whales were not Transient Killer Whales but likely Northern Resident Killer Whales. The last time we had Northern Residents in Tofino on a whale watching tour was the H5's in August 2014. We spent some time photographing them. Our Tofino Whale Watching Tours and our Hot Springs Tour were able get some good looks at these killer whales as they made their way up the coast past Tofino. The NRKW we saw yesterday day were the A12 Matriline (A34's) and this was a first meeting for us since we have been document killer whale sightings in our area!  They were moving slowly (3.6 knots) up the coast. We observed them tail slapping, spy hopping and traveling. They are a beautiful family of whales to watch. 

Northern Resident killer whales generally travel in large pods of closely-related individuals within predictable ranges and exclusively feed on fish, primarily salmonid species. The Northern Resident population roam the waters off northern Vancouver Island and the mainland coast as far north as southeast Alaska.

This week Whale Watching in Tofino has been absolutely amazing! We have had several orca sightings on our whale watching tours, humpback whales off Long Beach and lots of Grey Whales, even today we had a mother and calf spy hopping at Tonquin Beach.