September 28th - A windy day loaded with whales!

We left the harbour on the 28th into some wind and waves, but it was all worth it to see all the wildlife we found that day! Our two boats found 2 playful Humpbacks in the Strait of Georgia playing in the waves and then got word of a pod of orca that was found just south of them so they headed over to see those animals as well! One of the boats got even luckier when just before getting back to Nanaimo Harbour they found another lone orca travelling.

Let’s start with the Humpbacks! The two animals found were BCX1251 “Orion” and KEY0013 “Snoopy”. These two were being playful together while fighting through some of the same waves we were! There was plenty of tail flukes, tail lobing, and even some trumpeting! Trumpeting is an extra sound when they come to the surface to breathe that tends to be much louder and deeper than the “blow”. It, as the name suggests, almost sounds like someone playing the trumpet. Although more research needs to be done on the subject some theories as to why the whales trumpet is that it is a form of communication likely expressing tension for the whale. With the interactions between the two humpbacks it could be that one was just trying to get the others attention. Looking back through the photos we also noticed what looked like a lamprey on the side of one of the animals. This could explain some of the erratic behaviour as often they get stressed having parasites on them and will be more active in an attempt to knock them off.

If you look on the right side of this animal you can see what looks like a pacific lamprey holding on to the whale! A lot of the circular scars on the whales backs are from these little animals.

After leaving Orion and Snoopy we headed for the orca who turned out to be the T035As and the T038As! These two pods were travelling together forming a group of 6 animals. The T035As consist of T035A “Lester” travelling with three kids; T035A1 “Opal”, T035A2, and T035A3. Lester, lets call her “Les” for now, is 21 years old with her kids being 9, 6, and 1, respectively. This pod is a great example of our growing transient orca population with so many youngsters in the group!

The T038As are 19 year old T038A “Dana” and her daughter 4 year old T038A1. Dana is a quite striking orca in the fact that she has a very vibrant white patch on the left side of her body just in front of her dorsal fin!

Dana’s white spot! Pretty easy to spot, eh?

The last animal seen today by half of our guests was the surprise loner T077A at the very end! he popped up out of nowhere and gave the guests an example of the size difference between males and females of this species. A female will only get to be about 7m long while a fully grown male will be closer to 9m! Their dorsals, and all their fins for that matter, are bigger as well. The males dorsals get to be a whopping 6 feet tall! That is taller than most of our staff members!

T077A! Check out the size of that fin!

Check out some more of the amazing photos taken on this day by our marine naturalist Rebeka Pirker!

Snoopy doing some splashing with their tail in the strait.

Looks like some new scarring on T077As dorsal! Can you spot the grey patch I’m talking about?