“Wonders and Mysteries of the Animal World”, a book that tattooed my heart with a full-page image of a spy-hoping orca. On the first page of the book, my dad wrote his name, followed by “1970”, thirteen years before I was born. The book was hidden among dozens that my dad had gradually added to our living room library. The image caused me a strange mix feeling of fear and fascination, which increased as I got closer to it with with each turn of page.
A little more than three decades since I first opened that book, I decided to embark on an adventure to achieve a dream that always seemed far away: photographing an orca in its natural habitat. So, in June 2022, I took a plane from Costa Rica to the East Coast of the United States, and then crossed the entire country to the other coast. My destination: the San Juan Islands in State of Washington, one of the best places on the planet to see killer whales.
After sleeping for only a few hours, I took a bus to Anacortes where I would take the ferry which have all the amenities, including a restaurant, but without thinking it too much I changed them for the bow, where the very strong wind wanted to change my decision, but this was a great opportunity to begin my long-awaited search. When we got to Friday Harbor on the San Juan Island I was impressed. It is a charming town, with a traditional architecture and a population that barely exceeds 2,500 inhabitants. The marina has dozens of boats, many of which are for whale watching which reassured me that I was in the ideal place.
Dragging my tiredness from traveling by air, land and sea, I entered the small shop of Maya's Legacy Whale Watching. The walls of the shop were full of spectacular photos of orcas. Lee greeted me in a friendly manner, he was going to be the guide of the expedition. Then I realized that he was also responsible for most of the photos I had seen. My admiration was at its peak. The boat I took used to be from the Coast Guard of New Zealand, and now it is used to explore the Salish Sea in small groups in search of its treasures.
On this first attempt to see orcas we found harbor seals, Stellar sea lions, bold eagles and a humpback whale that had migrated from Hawaii in search of food. Anyone else would consider this the perfect expedition, but without the trace of the killer whale it was just the opening act for me.
In the coming days continued to go out to the sea eight hours a day. There was no trace of the killer whales. I was running out of time, I would soon have to return to Costa Rica. Sometimes I saw harbor porpoises, the preferred prey of the Biggs' killer whales, passing by, which gave me hope. After several expeditions totaling more than twenty hours at sea, Lee received a report of the location of a pod of orcas. They were near Vancouver Island, more than an hour and a half away by boat. We sailed through the sea at high speed, without stopping for a minute. The afternoon was sunny and cold. After crossing the border with Canada we arrived at a magical fjord in Vancouver Island. The calm sea, surrounded by high autumn-colored mountains looked like a painting by Thomas Cole or Albert Bierstadt.
We turned off the engine. The silence created an atmosphere of deep expectation. It began to rain, a crescendo of drama. “Pfuussshhhh!”, the unmistakable sound of the powerful blow from an orca. Seconds later another one, and then a third one, while the orcas in the pod started to emerge like mystical creatures from the bottom of the sea. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing through the view finder on my camera, it was finally happening.
Days later, on my last expedition, we found a new pod of killer whales that was hunting harbor porpoises, led by a huge male that the scientists had named Stanley. At one point they were so close to us that they didn’t fit in the frame of my camera. A young orca was very active, showing the back of its beautiful tail flukes.
Then, for a few minutes we stopped seeing it, until suddenly it popped its head out of the water, spy hoping, without making the slightest noise, like a ghost, just as I had seen it in my dad's book so many years ago. My camera fired a burst of shots. With a lump in my throat I hugged my inner child, we had done it.
Amazing photos!