October 14th - T65A's at Apex

Our boat headed out from Nanaimo at noon and heard reports of killer whales in the Strait of Georgia, not too far from the ferry terminal. These were a pod of transient/Bigg’s killer whales, which are an ecotype that feed exclusively on marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, porpoises, and even other whales! They do not eat fish, so all of those migrating salmon that are heading to our rivers are safe from these predators!

Killer whales typically travel in matriarch societies, which is essentially a group that is led by the oldest female of the family. Killer whales life expectancies are close to that of humans, which means we can get some pods with multiple generations of whales all traveling and socializing together!

The family pod we saw on this tour was were the T065As, a group that is commonly seen in the Salish Sea. We watched doing long foraging dives, being stealth and quiet like this ecotype often is. Their prey have excellent hearing as well so these whales need to be careful about how much they vocalize with each other.

There are 6 whales in this pod- the matriarch is T065A “Fingers/Artemis”, and she has 5 surviving offspring ranging in age from being born in 2004 to 2018. In this encounter however, mom was no where to be seen. This is strange, but also nothing really surprises us with these mysterious animals anymore! Perhaps she was nearby but we couldn’t see her, and she planned to join up again later. Killer whales can vocalize with each other for kilometres underwater.

It was a tricky day for photography but we did manage to get a few! Here are some of the best photos taken during the tour by marine naturalist Cheyenne Brewster.

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster