The first day of May was a great one as we headed out into the calm waters of this sunny day. We set out south towards the Gulf Islands to find our whales for the day. As we were looking for the whales, we came across a huge diversity of wildlife. We first found some harbour seals that were on the shallow shores hanging out in the sun. They were hard to spot from the distance due to them blending into the rocks. Their coats are excellent for blending into pebbled beaches as you can see in the pictures below. Some were hanging out in the water with their tails sticking upwards which is a technique they use for thermoregulation. We also found some oystercatchers in this area that are easily identifiable due to their orange beaks. They may be called oystercatchers but they rarely eat oysters! Their diet mainly consists of mussels, limpets, barnacles and snails.

As we continued our search for whales, we ran into some Steller sea lions and California sea lions too. Steller sea lions are the largest type of sea lions in the world. The males are especially large where they can reach up to 3 meters long. the females are usually smaller and have a darker colour. You can tell apart California sea lions from Steller sea lions as the California sea lions are smaller and darker, and their males have a prominent ridge on their head.

We finally found our whale at Stuart Channel near Thetis island! The humpback we found was Hammer and they were feeding in this area. We got lots of fluke shots from them too which is how we knew it was Hammer. Humpback flukes are all unique like our fingerprints and this is how we can tell them apart. Hammer is a young humpback whale that was born in 2019 and has been in the area for a couple of weeks.

Check out some of the pictures our Naturalist Ryan took below:

May 1st - In the Gulf Islands with Hammer the humpback!

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