May 29th - An exciting first day back on the water!

The first day back in 2020 sure made a big splash! We took a single household with 5 people out on a private charter on May 29th and had an amazing start to the season! We didn’t have to go from from home for this excitement, finding two different groups of whales on the east side of Gabriola Island.

The first group we saw was the T101s, a group of 4 whales. This pod contains T101 “Reef” who is the ~51 year old matriarch of the group who travels with her three sons. Her sons are T102 “Beardslee”, T101A “Rush”, and T101B “Lagoon”. These four animals were cruising around the northern tip of Gabriola Island and ended up leading us back towards Nanaimo harbour where we left from. This pod is very impressive to see because of the large size of the male Killer Whales. These big boys can grow to be about 8m in length and weigh upwards of 5400Kg (or about 12000 pounds). Since the T101 males are all relatively old (36, 27, and 23) they are close to (if not already at) their full size. Reef is smaller than her sons as female orcas max size is about 7m in length and only 2700kg (~600lbs).

Reef (left) and Beardslee (right) swimming together. Notice the size difference?

Lagoon (front) and Beardslee (back) travelling. You can see that Beardslee is still slightly larger than his younger brother.

After we left the T101s just off of Jack point in Nanaimo we headed back to the other side of Gabriola where there was another group of Orca spotted! This group was two pods travelling together. T124C “Cooper” travelling with his sister’s pod, the T124As. Cooper is usually a lone male but is often seen travelling with one of his relatives. Cooper was born in 1992 making him 28 years old. His sister T124A “Kittiwake” (36) has three kids she travels with and one grandchild. These animals are T124A3 “Wasini”, T124A4 “Sabio”, T124A6 “Kasuun” and her grandson T124A3A who doesn’t have a nickname yet since he was just born last year.

Cooper (left), T124A3A (middle) and Wasini (right) travelling together.

This pod was having a great time as they were travelling with some breaches, tail slaps, and sideways swimming; it was a great sight to be had!

Can you spot the sideways whale? (its right beside the leading whale.)

We ended up leaving this group behind and continuing on our tour taking us around Gabriela island where we saw lots of sea lions, seals, bald eagles, and turkey vultures. It was a great trip with a great ending! As we were headed back north to go back to the harbour the T101s surprised us once again by showing up as we were passing through Dodds Narrows.

If you have any questions or are wanting to book a charter with us feel free to contact us at any time!

Here are some more photos from the day!

Rush splashing through the waves with his mom going under the water behind him.

Rush surfacing in front of a whole lot of sea lions on Entrance Islands shoreline.

Beardslee surfacing in front of Entrance Island.

A nice close look at Rush.

Bearslee and Reef passing by a buoy.

Check out the power in the blow! This cloud of water released when an orca breathes is one of the easiest ways to spot them out on the water.

One of the young orca from the T124As surfacing excitedly.