Wednesday was a day that not only I myself will remember for the rest of my life: After a nice dive in Goofnuw channel with two mantas and a grey shark joining, our second boat brought the news: ORCAS !!! Confirmed by Captain John’s video frames.
We headed down south and eventually say 4 huge dorsal fins sticking out of the water. At the sixth attempt in the water one of the females approached us an swam past just feets below our own feet.
Crystal clear blue water and Orcas – that is something BBC film crews are begging for!
From then on we would see them a few times. Only our approach got… let’s say more professional: Jumping into the water and going after the whales at full fin power obviously did not do the job. You could fin forever (as some red faces indicated), but the animals always were faster even if they did not seem to move at all. We found out that they were in a much better position when we stopped the boat 60 feet in front of the whales and got into the water, hoping that they would not change their direction. Quite often we would see them passing us at 30 feet distance, which they kept as the bull and the cow had a semi-adult and even a calf (approx. 5 feet) with them. Seeking shelter obviously also was their reason for coming to Yap as Orcas normally tend to stay and feed in cooler water.
Does it get any better? Yes, indeed it does!
Following the Orcas on board of the „Silvertip“ the other day, it took us a long while before we realized that one of the fins did not belong to the whales. Once in the water it turned out to be a massive sunfish, the Orca toy of the minute!
Some of us, among them our new whale afficianados “Orca Boy“ Russell and Cecile, followed the whales, others kept track of the sunfish. Unlike the whales, that strange deep sea fish stayed with us for more than 20 minutes so everybody had a chance to shoot pictures.
When our dive center manager Jan tried to lure us into some shark action for the afternoon we all did not even consider going. Too much!  WHAT A DAY!!!
Needless to say what became the attraction for the nocturnal slide show on Mnuw. “Can you show me the Orcas?“, was one of the things you would hear most often, with the casual “Now I hate you even more!“
In order to save some dignity for that sunfish off Yap Caverns: How could anybody expect it to stay while we were circling it like blueprints for predators? Well, it stayed and I’d say that’s not too bad for an animal with a brain of the size of a walnut!