May 14th - The T123's again, this time hunting a harbour seal!
On this beautiful sunny Friday our open boat Cascadia headed out of the Nanaimo Harbour in the search for whales. We started the search heading South through Dodd Narrows, a beautiful channel that separates Vancouver Island from Mudge Island.
Dodd narrows has trail access, via the Cable bay trail, just south of Nanaimo. It has been deemed the 2nd best diving location in BC due to the amount of wildlife that live in the narrows. This dive is a professional dive because the currents through the channel average 5-9 knots, or about 10-20 km/hr. The narrows is home to many species of fish, anemone, sea stars, crabs, and even cold water Orange Cup Corals. All of these animals attract the attention of Eagles, Great Blue Herons, Turkey Vultures, Cormorants, River Otters, Harbour Seals, Stellar Sea Lions and California Sea lions. The Narrows are often used by Orcas and porpoises to travel between the Gulf Islands and the Nanaimo Harbour. It’s a well trafficked area by people and wildlife alike.
After passing Dodd we continued south through the beautiful Gulf Islands where we found a pod of Orcas, the T123’s near Wallace Island, a long narrow gulf island sandwiched between Galiano Island on its East and Salt Spring on its West.
The T123’s were traveling and hunting as we followed them from Wallace Island up to Porlier Pass. These were the same 4 whales we had seen the day before at the Canadian US Border. The trip from where we left them on the 13th to where we found them on the 14th is only about 30 kms, which is not a lot of distance to cover when you are an Orca. Orcas will travel over 100kms a day looking for their favourite foods, Harbour Seals and Sea Lions. Each adult orca needs to eat about 30 0lbs of food per day, and when you’re eating Harbour seals that’s about 1.5 seals per orca.
The T123’s are a pod of 4 whales. The Matriarch is T123 - Sidney - Born around 1985. She travels with her oldest son Stanley, T123A who is 21 years old this year. As well as Stanleys younger sisters, Lucky (T123B born 2012) and Darcy (T123C born in 2018). Lucky and Darcy are not full grown, so do not need 300 lbs of food per day like Stanley and Sidney do, but they still participate in the hunts and take their share. In a few years this pod of 4 will need about 1200 lbs of food per day to feed them all.
Orcas learn to hunt from watching their mom and siblings while they are still relying on moms milk for food. Darcy spent a full year watching her older brother and sister, learning their body language and their hunting techniques, waiting for the day they would get to hunt with them. As Orcas age, often the Matriarch will take a back seat in the hunts and let their maturing daughters lead the hunts, so their daughters can get practice teaching others how to hunt, for the days when they will have their own calves to raise.
We were fortunate enough to see a very close up seal hunt from these whales today, and even saw Sidney carrying a seal in her mouth. Sounds like it was a successful hunt!
Unfortunately due to technical problems we weren’t able to get any photos during this tour, but enjoy some photos from the pervious tour of the same whales taken by our marine naturalist Cheyenne Brewester.
