Every day we check several sources to see if any whales have been sighted in our range. Some days there are no sightings and some days, like today, there are multiple. Today we had a sightings report of Humpbacks heading towards Vancouver out of Nanaimo and Orcas in Howe sound, just north of Vancouver. Knowing Orcas travel quickly, we decided our first check would be Howe Sound. We crossed the Strait of Georgia into the beautiful Howe Sound and took a look around. Unfortunately, as happens sometimes, the whales had moved on by the time we got there. So we started our trek back through the Strait when we got a call that one of the other companies had found several Humpbacks in the middle of the Strait.

When we arrived on scene we were excited to see 4 plumes of mist rising into the air. 4 Humpbacks were near the surface. These 4 were doing a lot of surface behaviour, it seemed like there was a combination of play and lunch-time happening all at once. All the surface activity made it easy to ID these whales, as we use the bottom of their tails, or their flukes, to ID them. This group was Uluka, Split Fluke and calf, and BCZ0342.

Not all Humpbacks in the Salish Sea have a nickname, but they all have a number. These numbers are important to help track individuals in populations. Because our whales travel so much you sometimes have a whale who has 2 or 3 different nicknames. If we only use nicknames to ID them it looks like you have 3 different whales, but by using a number system like this, it’s like having a Latin name for species. It keeps it consistent, so even though they may have a different name, we can still know where an individual has been by using the number as well. One day BCZ0342 will get their own nickname, as will hopefully every humpback in our range.

BCZ0342 was doing a lot of trumpeting, tail lobbing and quick surface dives while Uluka, Split Fluke, and her calf were diving and feeding. Often the whales would surface and begin to push the water near the surface before doing very fast dives. They were making some pretty big waves, and a few times we think we caught them feeding near the surface. After a quick surface we would see them pushing water out of their mouths, likely filtering small fish and krill through their baleen.

Uluka (left) and Split Fluke (right) diving together

Here you can see BCZ0342 pushing water and diving into the wave they’ve created

Sometimes the lighting is just right and we get rainbow blows! This happened a lot today as our whales were very active near the surface.

You can see the scaring on BCZ0342’s back. These scars can be from predators or entanglement from fishing gear.

After leaving our group of 4 whales we headed towards Valdez Island where we could see a blow in the distance. As we approached we could tell they were doing some pretty long dives, but we spotted 3 more blows, closer to where we were. We slowed down and made our approach. 3 more Humpbacks surfaced near us, this time it was Geometry, Sherwina, and calf. Geometry is a large whale who is known to travel from Vancouver Island to Hawaii in the winters, though their gender has yet to be confirmed. Today they were traveling with mom Sherwina and her calf. Like Split Fluke, Sherwina is teacher her calf how to forage before they split up soon. These 3 were doing their deep dives so after we ID’ed our whales we headed up along the shore of Valdez and made our way into the islands after watching some Seals near Gabriola Passage.

Geometry fluking (left) next to Sherwina (right)

We were set to head home through Dodd’s Narrows and were nearly there when we spotted a faint blow to our left. Then another and another. A pod of Orcas! We traveled all the way to Vancouver to find them but it looks like they decided to come to us in the end. This pod was moving steadily as they approached Dodd’s Narrows, clearly on a mission to get somewhere as they passed many Sea Lions who were fishing in the area without a second glance. This group was a tricky one to ID as our orcas have been traveling in makeshift pods. Turns out this was part of the T60’s traveling with T2B.

T2B is actually a lone Female, something you don’t see too often. Pedder is 42 years old with no surviving offspring of her own. Today she was traveling with T60, Panthera and most of her pod. Pantheras 2 sons, T60D Orca and T60E Lynx, were traveling with Noah and Jude about a week ago. On today’s trip, Pedder and Panthera were traveling with T60C, Yelnats, T60F Tigris and T60G. The birth of Panthera’s youngest, T60G in 2019 was big news. This was her 7th calf to be born, and at at least 41 years old Panthera is nearing menopause. It’s still possible she could produce another, but 7 offspring is quite a lot for a single Orca to produce.

We traveled with this pod as they made their way towards the north end of Garbriola Island before we left them to head back to our own Harbour.

Below are some more photos of our whales from the tour taken by Marine Naturalist Rebeka Pirker.