June 12th - 5 humpback whales, including Slate and calf!

On June 12th we headed out at noon in search of wildlife. We started our search on this day by heading into the Strait of Georgia, making our way towards Sechelt.

It took some time but we finally found what we were searching for, a Humpback whale.
Our first encounter of the day was a pair of Humpback, who were being quite shy with their tails. We managed to get a few photos, but haven’t been able to ID them yet.

All the ducks, er, seagulls in a row.

As we continued our search heading North along the Sunshine Coast we came across a well loved duo who we’ve spent a considerable amount of time with this season so far. Slate and her new Calf. Slate was doing long feeding dives, as she needs to consume up to 5000 lbs of food per day, in order to provide enough milk for her growing calf, and put on weight for the migration south. While mom as diving the little calf was doing its best to keep up, but spending more time at the surface with us. Calves need to practice their diving to build up their strength, stamina and lung capacity. These are all essential things for a calf to develop so they can start doing their own foraging for fish.

Seeing these 2 side by side really shows the size difference between an adult humpback, which can be 40+ feet long and weight more than 40 tons, and a 6 month old who is probably about 18 feet long and about 1.5 tons. Above Slate is arching her back, high out of the water, in order to propel herself deep down, below you can see her lifting her tail out of the water, a behaviour called fluking. These tails are powerful and push Slate under the surface so she can feed on the tiny schooling fish, krill and plankton that wait below.

Some beautiful close ups of Slates Calfs dorsal. Dorsals, like the whales fluke, can be used to ID a humpback, as each whale has a unique dorsal fin, with a different shape and different scaring. It’s important to get images like this for our catalogues, so when this little one hopefully returns next year we can identify them, as they will likely be alone, or at the very least, will not be traveling with mom anymore. Whale catalogues are constantly being updated, as not only do we have new calves every year to add, but a whales fluke, or underside of their tail fin, can change drastically within one year. It’s important to keep those photos up to date for tracking individuals within the populations, both here in Canada and down in the breeding sites.

As we made our way back to harbour after leaving Slate and her calf we came across one last humpback off the shores of Gabriola Island. This whale has yet to be ID’d, as they don’t appear to be in any of our catalogues, but we will continue to search through them until we find a match. It could be a new whale to our area, or just one we haven’t seen in a long time, which means their tails coloration could have changed compared to the photos in our catalogues. If it comes down to it, we can zoom in on photos like this and actually use the edge of the fin to help ID the whale.

As we made our last stop on the tour at Gabriola Island to see the Cormorants, we also saw some birds of prey. 2 Turkey vultures were hanging out having a snack, while a Peregrine Falcon sat atop the bluffs watching us. The Peregrine is a relatively new resident of the area. We spotted them once or twice last season flying near the bluffs, but this year we’ve encountered them far more frequently. We hope they stick around and maybe in the future we’ll get to see some young ones spreading their wings.

All photos from todays tour were taken by Marine Naturalist Cheyenne Brewster.

Want to come out and see the beautiful wildlife in your own backyard? We have tours operating daily at noon, you can book on the website, call us, or visit our new office on the waterfront of Nanaimo.