October 7th - Visiting with humpback whales Divot and calf Olympus!

It was a gray rainy day, and while most people were at home putting a turkey in the oven or perfecting pumpkin pies for the big feast, these adventurous souls were ready to find some whales!

Both Cascadia and Keta left the dock around 11am to search in great conditions for flukes, dorsals, and blows. It wasn’t long until another vessel spotted two humpback whales near Porlier Pass, not too far from us. We arrived on scene to see two beautiful whales, a mom and calf, logging and milling about. We were even lucky enough to see a tail lob!

“Divot” (BCX1057) was seen earlier this spring with a small calf at her side, but my how that calf has grown over the summer! Pretty soon they will both start their migration south to the warm waters of either Mexico or Hawaii for mating season, and once there they will go their separate ways. Calf “Olympus” has just this one year to learn everything from its mom before making the northern migration on its own next spring. Tough life for a baby humpback!

Here are some of the best photos taken by our crew. We are still running daily tours at 11am, so if it’s your dream to see a whale in wild join us!

The trailing edge and patterns on this partial fluke shot helped us to identify this individual as “Divot”’s calf “Olympus”. Photo by Jilann Campbell

Dorsal shot of baby whale “Olympus”. Photo by Rodrigo Menezes

Dorsal shot of mom “Divot”. Photo by Rodrigo Menezes

Adult female humpbacks are larger than the males! This is unusual in the Animal Kingdom but is important for the humpback whale calves survival. Photo by Jilann Campbell

What a big whale! Photo by Jilann Campbell

Olympus was playing around and we caught a glimpse of its fluke! Photo by Jilann Campbell

Look at all of the water cascading off of this big mother whale! Photo by Jilann Campbell

The white underside of a pectoral fin. Photo by Jilann Campbell

From this angle you can see the vertebrae on the whale’s peduncle! Photo by Jilann Campbell

Olympus sticking part of its fluke and a pectoral fin into the air. Photo by Jilann Campbell