October 28th - Stripe and Twinning near Gabriola Island on a lovely fall day

Our semi-covered boat (that’s heated!) set out at noon from Nanaimo and it only took them an hour to find some humpback whales! Just near Gabriola Island, right across from Nanaimo, were two humpbacks milling. We had lovely conditions and we were able to watch their huge bodies surface slowly before raising their huge flukes to the sky.

Humpback whales can get over 50 feet long and their fluke along can get over 15 feet wide! They have a very powerful exhale that can be heard and seen from great distances, and that’s actually one of the main ways we find them. When they exhale the air pushes up some sea water, but a lot of the liquid plume we see is whale snot! That’s right, we are out there looking for huge whale snot rockets!

After some time watching the whales and patiently waiting to photograph their flukes at a good angle, our marine naturalist Brad Farrow was able to get some ID shots. We can tell an animal’s identity by the unique trailing edge and pattern on the fluke, and we have multiple catalogues that we use to compare our photos against hundreds of documented whales.

We were watching whales BCX1207 “Twinning” and BCZ0004 “Stripe”. From the photos below you’ll see that Twinning, who is a BCX whale, is mostly dark grey on the underside of the fluke, whereas Stripe, who is a BCZ whale, is mostly white underneath.

We also stopped at the local log booms to check in on some pinnipeds. There are lots of large male California sea lions at this time of year! You can see them from shore if you hike the Cable Bay Trail or go to Bigg’s Park. We also say harbour seals, aka rock sausages, who are the favourite food of the transient orca.

Another great day on the water! Here are the best photos by Brad:

Jilann LechnerOctober 31, 2021Comment