Some Unexpected Visitors on a Porpoise Watching Trip! – 10/3/15

My wife Christine and I have one mission: to raise awareness for Harbour Porpoise, a species that, sadly, is often overlooked. Highly intelligent, social, but not overly acrobatic, these incredible little creatures capture our imagination.
So this time we took a fairly large group of people with us to share our fascination with this species with friends. So we waited. For a long time. After spotting one Harbour seal after another, but not a single porpoise, we were getting close to the point where we wanted to give up.

But then we spotted some very odd looking porpoises with unusually large dorsal fins in the distance. At second glance they revealed themselves as a small group of three Pacific white-sided dolphins. They were quite small and reminded us of a gang of teenage boys. Did they scare off the Harbour Porpoises we were expecting?

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At this point we were happy to see anything! But sure enough, they were trailed by a lone Harbour Porpoise following them at safe distance. This one stuck around for just a couple of minutes before leaving the area. Many of those in our group saw a wild harbour porpoise for the first time, and even Christine and I had never encountered Pacific white-sided dolphins in the wild.

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It was almost too dark to take pictures as the sun was no longer to be seen, but sharing these moments with our friends was worth the long wait. What a wonderful evening!

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-Marcus

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