July 13th - Humpbacks making a splash in the Strait.

It was a beautiful sunny day when Kula, our semi-covered boat, set sail in search of whales. We headed south of Nanaimo through Dodd’s Narrows, the small passage that joins the Nanaimo Harbour to the Gulf Islands. We continued south through the Gulf Islands towards Porlier Pass. There we stopped at a well-known seal haul-out sight to watch some harbour seals as they soaked up the sun.

Harbour Seals are the favourite food of the local Transient Orcas. While these guys aren’t too graceful on land, they are excellent swimmers. Pups can swim within hours of being born, while still relying on mom for nutritious milk until they are able to hunt fish themselves. They hunt fish using excellent eye sight, but when that fails they rely on their whiskers to sense the vibrations made by fish in the water.

After our time with the seals we continued through the pass to find an unexpected group of Stellar Sea Lions sleeping in a Buoy. There was a loud bell on this buoy, so we’re not quite sure why they chose that spot to nap in, but they didn’t seem to bothered.

Most of the Stellar Sea Lions have headed north to the breeding grounds, but we always have some females who just don’t want to go. They’d rather spend the summer eating fish and sleeping.

After our time with the Sea Lions we headed North East through the Strait of Georgia, watching for any whales.

About half way between Nanaimo and Vancouver we spotted our whales. A Humpback in the distance was breeching! Even from a mile away we could see the large animal surging from the water and making a huge splash. We slowed our approach and continued watching. They must have breeched 4 or 5 times by the time we got about 200 meters from them. They alternated between breeching and pec slapping, where they would roll onto their back and slap the water with their impressive 16 foot long pectoral fins.

Every Humpback has unique pectoral fins, like a fingerprint, and they can be used to identify individuals. These beautiful Pectoral fins belong to Fader (BCY0195). Fader was the whale breaching and slapping the water.

Faders Fluke

Almost as soon as we arrived the action seemed to stop temporarily. Fader had taken a deep breath and dove underwater. They appeared again shortly and continued pec slapping. Soon Fader was joined by 2 other whales. We can only speculate that the pec slapping and breaching was Faders way of calling the other two whales to join them.

Split Fin (BCZ0298) and Divot (BCX1057) going to join Fader

Split Fin got her name from the deep gash in her dorsal fin, which makes her very easy to ID quickly on the water.

Divot (left) got her name from the notch on the right side of her fluke. These whales all have very unique flukes, which made it easy to tell them apart as they dove. Faders fluke (right) is only white in the middles and looks to 'fade out near the edges of their fins. Split Fin’s (middle) fluke is nearly all white, except the very edges.

The 3 Humpbacks began doing deep dives, showing off their huge flukes and doing slow, big circles around the boat.

For an hour we sat and watched these beautiful giants surfacing and diving before they decided they had somewhere to be and slowly started heading South East, in the direction we had come from. Our time with the whales was done, so we headed back towards Nanaimo. We stopped at the bluffs on Gabriola Island to check up on the Cormorant chicks and the 3 baby seagulls. We were surprised by a pair of Harbour Seals hanging out on the rocks below the Cormorant nests.

If you would like the opportunity to watch Humpbacks or Orcas in the wild you can book your own whale watching adventure through our website, over the phone at 250-667-5177, through email at info@vancouverislandwhalewatch.com or in person at our office.