All three of our boats left Nanaimo harbour in search of whales this morning. Our open boat, Cascadia, was the first to be rewarded, finding two Humpback Whales travelling alongside each other. These were soon identified as Dalmatian (BCY0994) and Wolf Eel (BCY0940). Up until around five years ago, we believed humpbacks were solitary animals as we rarely saw them together. Now, more and more often, we see multiple whales associating with each other. We suspect the reason for the change is due to population growth since commercial whaling was banned and that intially, they were so few in number that it was rare to see more than one. Nowadays, we get between three and four hundred whales that come to our area to feed between April and October each year before spending winter in their breeding grounds in Hawaii, Mexico or Central America.
Our two other boats had headed North in search of a lone orca who had been spotted from land earlier in the day. Despite their best efforts, this whale remained elusive so they made their way towards Cascadia to share their find. Once they caught up, Dalmatian separated from his friend so our boats spent their time travelling alongside Wolf Eel, who continued her journey along the coast. Cascadia’s time with the humpbacks was up so they made their way south to an area we’ve nicknamed Stinky Rocks, popular with Stellar Sea Lions and Harbour Seals.
After some time meandering alongside Wolf Eel, a guest suddenly noticed some splashing in the distance and alerted their naturalist. The splashing continued and we realised it was another whale, this time an Orca! Our two boats left Wolf Eel to her travels and raced towards the orca as it continued breaching in the distance, alerting Cascadia who also started making their way to join us. The behaviour of this whale combined with the fact that they were travelling alone meant we had our suspicions about who it could be. Once we got nearer we were able to confirm those suspicions were correct, it was:

T065A5 Indy ♂ (2014)

He is the whale we’d been searching for earlier, which goes to show how easy they can be to miss. Indy is a very strange whale and tends to break the typical patterns we see when it comes to the Transient Killer Whales. Usually, the males will stay with their mom for their entire lives but Indy separated from his mom and siblings and has been travelling alone since he was only five years old. Developmentally, he would still be very much in the infancy stages of his life, when these whales are usually still learning from and reliant upon their family. Aside from that, Indy’s behaviour is also very unusual. We’ve speculated he may have actually been kicked out of his pod, as it’s common to see him causing a commotion. In the past we’ve seen him using birds for target practice and even getting himself tangled after playing with a crab trap. He’s also known for showing curiosity around boats and displaying behaviours we only tend to see when the Orca are celebrating with each other in what we call a “T-party”, when multiple families get together to socialize. True to form, today Indy was quite excited as we watched him. He repeatedly breached, tail-slapped, rolled around upside down waving his pecs in the air and just generally acted a fool while we got to enjoy the view.

The Transient Killer Whales eat marine mammals, such as seals, sea lions, porpoises and occasionally even large baleen whales. All of their prey can hear really well, so if one troublemaker is drawing attention to their presence, it would reduce the family’s hunting success. We’ll likely never know if Indy’s mom had had enough of his antics and this is the real reason he’s riding solo, but he still seems to be doing well for himself and has been seen bouncing around from pod to pod to still get some social time with his species. Soon all of our boats got to spend some time with Indy, and he was acting a little closer to a normal whale by the end of our visit, travelling off towards the Sunshine Coast. We left him to it and continued back to Nanaimo.

We were very lucky getting both species of whale so close to home, with some really great looks at both of them! Please enjoy all of the photos from the day taken by our onboard Marine Naturalists Hayleigh Hilbert, Lucy Willis, and Val Watson.

July 26, 2024, 10:30 am - Humpback Dalmatian and Wolf Eel, plus Indy the orca!

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