June 25, 2024, 3:30pm - T049C Neilson travels north and some Acrobatic Humpbacks!

It was a sunny afternoon when we headed out for our second tour of the day. After a successful morning trip, our hopes were high for an equally successful morning! We headed north along Vancouver Island’s coastline towards where we suspected our morning whales had travelled. While we did not find our morning humpback, our open boat did find a different solitary humpback travelling along.
It wasn’t very cooperative for ID’ing as it refused to fluke nicely (lift its tail out of the water), but thankfully their dorsal fin was distinct enough that we could confirm an ID from that instead! This little whale was Olympus (BCX2075)! This young lady had her first calf last year at the young age of 5. This season she has been busily feeding away and not being very surface active. That’s okay though - it’s a lot of energy to raise a child and migrate to and from Hawaii, so we are sure she’s tuckered out and still building her energy levels back up!

While our open boat was watching Olympus, our Semi-covered boat found a different whale to watch. They relocated our orca from this morning - Nielson!

T049C Nielson ♂ (1998)

Nielson was travelling northbound when we found him this afternoon. At first, he was just being a normal orca - travelling along with occasional surfaces. However, he seemed excited for a brief period as he suddenly breached a couple of times! Unfortunately, we missed getting shots of this (it’s the Naturalist curse we swear - they always do excited behaviours when we aren’t ready!) but it was still very interesting to see!
Once we departed our orca and humpbacks we turned southbound and started making our way back towards Nanaimo. We were cruising along when suddenly we spotted even more whales!
These two were identified as Graze (BCY0523) and Strike (BCX1675). Graze is a notoriously “bad fluker” - meaning we very rarely see her fluke. 95% of the time when we observe her, we only ever get to see her dorsal fin. Today she proved us wrong though - not only was she fluking, but she was cartwheeling, tail lobbing, and being very surface active!
Graze and Strike have been spotted travelling together since at least June 17th. With these two being known females, we are curious if these two are both currently pregnant. In previous years we have had a couple of females who have been seen associating closely while pregnant, the most commonly known example being Heather and Raptor back in 2019. We are eager to see if these two return to our area with calves in tow next year!
At the very end of our time with these two, a third friend joined in. This whale is a staff favourite - they were identified as Eros (BCX2201)! Eros has a beautiful fluke, and while we were unable to stick around to observe them much today, we are excited that they are back in our area once again!
It was getting quite late into the day thanks to our surprise encounter with Graze, Strike, and Eros, so once we left we needed to head right back towards home port.

Photos from this trip were taken by Marine Naturalists Hayleigh Hilbert and Aly Kohlman!

Olympus surfacing, can you see her nostrils just above the surface? Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.

Olympus lifting her fluke to go for a dive. Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.

We IDed Olympus today from her distinct dorsal fin. Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.

T049C Neilson surfacing in the waves. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

See the two distinct notches on T049C Neilson’s dorsal fin? Photo by Aly Kohlman.

A great look at T049C Neilson’s eye patch! Photo by Aly Kohlman.

T049C Neilson crashing through a wave. Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.

T049C Neilson has some deep scarring on his saddle patch. Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.

Graze lifting her tail slightly. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

We don’t get to see this very often, its the underside of Graze’s tail flukes! Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Strike doing an aggressive dive. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Graze doing a cartwheel. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Strike lobtailing. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Look how much water Strike is flicking with her tail! Photo by Aly Kohlman.

A smaller tail lob from Strike. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Here we can see the unique pattern on Strike’s tail. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Strike cartwheeling! Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Some tail slaps from Strike. Photo by Aly Kohlman.

You can just barely see Strike’s hemispherical lobe in this photo that only female humpbacks have! Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Another tail slap from Strike. Look at all those Barnacles! Photo by Aly Kohlman.

Eros lifting their tail for a dive! Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.

The underside of Graze’s tail again! Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.

The underside of Eros’ tail flukes as they dive! Photo by Hayleigh Hilbert.