An interesting side note...
Three days after I kayaked Yaquina last year, I went out of Newport on a powerboat, for halibut.
On our way out of the bay, almost exactly where I had been in my kayak days before,
we had an at least 5' tall dorsal fin of a big bull orca pop up, right next to the boat.
I'm sure it was there for salmon or pinnipeds, but if it had popped up as close to my kayak, as it did the powerboat, I propbaly would have pooped, then died of heart attack!
We weren't fast enough to get a pic when it breached right next to the boat, but managed a pic when it came up again in our wake. 

I have never seen one in the wild. Don't want to see one from the kayak! I know that people paddle with them up in Alaska, as in on purpose! But I know people who play chicken with trains also. Someday it just might not work out the way you want it too!

Get lines up, sit and enjoy. No time to run away ;-)


Last year I saw them twice around while fishing:

Sorry for the thread detour from Yaquina Bay to Orcas...
Great video of Orcas from the kayak! The closest I have ever been to them on the water was from a friends boat trolling for coho in Puget Sound. A group of 10 or so kept on getting closer to us, we tried to move away from them to keep our distance but only thing we managed before they got even closer was to pull all of our gear and turn the engine off before two of them swam under the boat, one of them turning sideways like looking at us, it gives you chills to see them up close (picture below right before they went under us). They are very smart creatures, as far as I know there are no records of attacks on humans or kayaks in the wild (unlike large sharks!), only a few interactions with sailboats and other larger boats (including a series of repeated encounters in the Atlantic during 2021.