October 20th - Frankenstein and friend

Another day on the Salish Sea! It took a while to find our whales today, but we finally did! We got to see 2 different Humpbacks today. Frankenstein was the first whale we stopped with. He was doing some long deep dives but he also treated us to a Breach! It’s always exciting seeing an adult whale displaying so much power and energy. Did you know it takes about the same energy for a Humpback to breach as it does for a human to run a full marathon? And they use all that energy in about 8 seconds! Pretty cool.

After hanging out with Frankenstein we began to make our way back to Nanaimo when we found another Humpback. This little one was traveling in the Gulf Islands. Unfortunately they were being camera shy and we didn’t get a good photo of their tail, but we did get some dorsal photos. It is possible to ID Humpbacks with their dorsals, however, this was a young whale, so there’s a chance they may not have dorsal photos in the catalogs yet.
This could mean looking or unique marks and looking through all our old encounters with Juvenile whales to try and match them up to photos we’ve taken in the past. This can be time consuming, but it’s very satisfying when you finally ID your whale.

Below are the photos taken during the tour by Marine Naturalist Rebecca Stirling.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein