This morning we had two boats leaving the dock in search of whales. Both boats made their way south, spreading out in order to expand their search area and each stumbled upon their own pair of Humpback Whales!
Our semi-covered vessel was treated to the smell of whale blow as they got some close passes from one of their whales. She wasn’t raising her tail too high out of the water but after a closer inspection of the photos we were able to identify this whale as Pop Tart (BCY1014). Pop Tart got her endearing name as she was regularly seen popping out of the water as a calf while travelling with her famous mother Big Momma (BCY0324). Big Momma was one of the first whales recorded back in BC waters after almost 40 years without humpbacks being seen due to the whaling industry causing a severe decline in their numbers. Today Pop Tart was associating with Moray (BCY1176). Moray was lifting his tail beautifully out of the water making him nice and easy to ID. It was so cool to see these two hanging out together, because both these animals winter in different parts of the world! Pop Tart is from the Hawaiian population, and Moray comes from the Mexican population, near the Baja’s. This is especially unusual because Moray’s mother BCX0081 Chunky actually comes from Hawaii as well! This means that he would have travelled on his own to Mexico, having never been there before. Usually, calves will return to the same area year after year to feed, and it will be the same feeding grounds their mother would have brought them in their first year. This interesting switch in wintering spots shows us that there is much to learn about these fascinating animals! This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a switch-up in our Humpbacks. Remember our famous girl Big Momma? She came to this area on her own as well, and it seems that she brought the whales with her! Sometimes a new place is better than old locations, and we are so happy Big Momma chose to start her family in our area!

Meanwhile, on the open boat, our crew stumbled across two humpbacks, Olympus (BCX2075) and Viking (BCY1063). These two were great to watch, diving for only short periods of time. Humpback whales can dive for up to 45 minutes at a time, so anytime we are fortunate to find them on short dives we are thrilled! Anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes is common for a dive time when we’re watching these guys, but they spend more time under the surface earlier in the season as they are feeding heavily in the depths of the Salish Sea. After spending some time with the humpbacks out in the strait, our open boat headed into the gulf islands to continue their search.

We got a report of Orcas heading north out of Samsum Narrows, and we travelled that way. Success! The Orca we saw today included one family and two lone whales:

T037A1 Inyo ♀ (2007)

T049C Neilson ♂ (1998)

T065A Fingers/Artemis ♀ (1986)
T065A2 Ooxjaa ♂ (2004)
T065A3 Amir ♂ (2007)
T065A4 Ellifrit ♀ (2011)
T065A6 Callisto ♀ (2018)

These guys were pretty spread out, but staying in the same area for a while. Eventually, lone male Neilson headed off on his own again southbound. Guests were treated to some great surface activity from this family, including a tail slap and some breaching! It can be hard to photograph a breach out of the blue so no pics today, but seeing it firsthand is even better. This group is great to watch because of the variety of ages represented. Ooxjaa is the oldest brother and is almost fully grown at 20 years old. This means that he has grown much bigger than his younger brother and sisters, although his younger brother Amir is close behind in size! Seeing the large boys next to their mom Artemis provides a great size comparison between sexually mature orcas, and makes it easy to ID them.

The semi-covered boat finished off the day seeing some other wildlife on this rainy day, including some Harbour seals and a very soggy Bald Eagle!

Check out photos taken by onboard naturalists Vanessa Vereschahen and Lucy Willis.