August 15th - An afternoon with Scoop, Snoopy and Strike
On August 15th we had an eventful day out in the Strait of Georgia. Our trip started with heading towards Bowen Island where we got a report of humpback whales! On our way there, our boat Cascadia spotted humpback whale “Scoop” (BCX0870), East of Gabriola Island. Scoop was quite active as she was surfacing quite frequently and we were able to see a bunch of flukes from her.
After spending some time with her, we got a report of two more humpbacks closer to Bowen Island. When we headed towards there we ran into “Snoopy” (BCY0770) and “Strike” (KEX0045)! They were doing long dives together and we got pretty majestic fluke shots from them.
Humpback whales can be identified by the underside and the trailing edge found along their tail flukes. Each of them are different like our fingerprints. Humpbacks are categorized on their fluke colour in Bc where BCX humpbacks have mostly black tails (like Scoop and Strike), BCY humpbacks have 20-60% of their tail white (like Snoopy), and BCZ humpbacks are ones where more than 60% of their tail are white.
Check out some of the pictures our naturalists took below!
Photo by Ryan Uslu.
Scoop! Photo by Ryan Uslu.
Photo by Ryan Uslu.
Photo by Ryan Uslu.
Photo by Ryan Uslu.
Photo by Val Watson.
Photo by Val Watson.
Photo by Val Watson.
Photo by Val Watson.
Snoopy! Photo by Val Watson.
Strike with Mount Baker in the background. Photo by Val Watson.
Photo by Val Watson.