December 4th - 6 humpbacks in the Winchelsea Islands!
Snow covered the mountains around Nanaimo as we left for the day to find some whales. Although the temperature was cold there was a buzz of excitement in the air as Kula left the dock. There had already been reports of whales seen from shore near Nanoose Bay. Kula headed this direction hoping to find these animals and within half an hour saw the telltale sign that there is a whale nearby: a blow! These blows belonged to a cow-calf pair of humpbacks; Graze and her calf from this year. These two also had an escort travelling with them. Unfortunately for us, none of these animals were lifting their tail flukes out of the water so the escort is going to remain a mystery.
A humpback whale escort is exactly what it sounds like. A male humpback will travel with a female and her calf to help protect her from predators. Their end goal in doing this is to be remembered by the female when she is ready to breed again and be the one she choses to pass on her genes with. This behaviour is often seen in our waters towards the end of the feeding season when the humpbacks start to travel south to their breeding grounds in Hawaii, South America, or Mexico.
Once we spent our time with this group of three we ended up spotting even more blows not to far away! we headed over to see who was there and it was another cow-calf pair with another escort! This pair was IDed as Sherwina and her calf. Again the escort didn’t cooperate with us and we didn’t get an ID. We are surprised to be finding these adult whales still spending time in our waters since most of the humpbacks have already started their migration. Typically we would expect the humpbacks to leave in late fall/early winter and return at the end of spring to early summer. Of course, each whale has their own personality and can choose to leave at different times, if they chose to go at all.
We can’t wait to keep running our trips this winter and seeing who else might be out there! If you are interested in joining a tour with us we are still running tours on Kula, our covered vessel who has a heater to keep you comfortable while onboard. Tours are now departing from Nanaimo at 11am!
Please enjoy all the photos fro December 4th taken by naturalist Rebeka Pirker.
BCY0523 Graze surfacing in front of Winchelsea island! The red and white tower in the background is a control tower used by the military to run operations in their military practice area further offshore.
Graze preparing to dive!
KEY0034 Sherwina surfacing.
A lovely backlit blow!
Sherwina heading for another dive! Shallow flukes like this can sometimes be used to ID an animal (further along in the process) by looking at the trailing edge of the tail flukes instead of the general pattern on them!
Sherwina!
Sherwina (left) diving followed by her unknown escort.
Blows! These two are Sherwina and her escort.
Here we have the unknown escort (left), Sherwina (middle), and her calf (right) all diving together! Can you believe that calf is only about a year old? They’re getting so big!
A majestic California sea Lion enjoying the sunshine on this cold day.
Our sea lions are always fun to watch and imagine what they’re thinking. To me this looks like an awkward first date!