When Ken took Orca out of service in late 2015, he replaced it with a 1981 version of a Boston Whaler Revenge to use as our main Orca Survey boat based on San Juan Island. This “new” boat was named Orcinus after one of the original Boston Whalers in the study. While it did not have the classic lines of the older Whalers, Orcinus was still a Boston Whaler and it looked like a good working research boat. It proved to be an extremely reliable boat and we always got home safely after many lumpy days on the water. 

 

I only had one day in the seven full years of driving Orcinus where I had a problem. While on my way to a big group of Bigg’s [orcas] a couple of years ago, I found that there was a small crack in the fuel line. I McGyver’d up a fix with a plastic string from a garbage bag and the boat ran well enough that I considered continuing on to the whales. Orcinus’s two strikes against it were the same as the other Whalers—they put up a big wake at medium speeds and they were hard on the back and knees when going through any sort of tidal chop.

 

Before Orcinus, we never reliably had a boat in the water all year long as Ken [Balcomb] would often haul out Orca for the winter. Orcinus would get hauled once a year for its winter service and then get relaunched. This was really helpful in these recent years where the [Southern Resident’s] visits to inland waters have become more sporadic, and off-season encounters have become more important. Orcinus was used more intensely and for longer by Orca Survey than any other boat in Ken’s fleet with the exception of Orca and the trimaran High Spirits. It was a low-maintenance boat and relatively little money was ever spent on it.

 

We had many incredible encounters in Orcinus over the last seven or so years and a lot of ID photos and drone footage were taken from it. A couple of encounters stand out. I had T101B come over to the boat while it was shut down and just sit under it for a couple of minutes. He shoved off when his brothers came by so it kinda felt like he was using the boat as cover to surprise them. It would be the kind of thing a little brother would do.

 

Katie [Jones] and I had a moment in Orcinus with J pod a few years ago up near Turn Point. We had a little over half of J pod milling all around the boat for several minutes while it was shut down. It was like they were using the boat as a center point for their socializing. We even had J35 bring young J57 right alongside the boat. Katie got good video of it all and despite our best efforts to keep quiet, you can hear us giggling away because we knew we were having a magic moment. We called Ken afterwards and he was so happy for us. He said it sounded like the encounters that they used to have in the 1970s.

 

We are excited about the new LIFE PROOF Boat [KCB III] and the future of CWR but there were a lot of boats over the years that helped us get to this point. Orcinus was a good boat and served us well in its time of service and deserves to be remembered fondly. It will remain in our fleet for a while longer in case we are in need of a second boat.