June 13th - Casseiopeia and three other humpback whales!

We started our tour today by stopping at Entrance Island to see the Stellar Sea Lions. There are still plenty hanging out here, but it won’t be long before they head north. It’s pretty easy to see who the boys are and who the ladies are in these photos. These 2 big boys are protecting their rock from potential competition.
Male Stellar Sea Lions have darker bodies and light blonde/silver manes, which is what gives them the name Sea Lion. They are also much larger than the females. While female Stellars can be around 700-900 lbs, males are often 2000+ lbs. These pinnipeds (fin footed mammals) are members of the eared seal family. If you look closely, you can see the tiny ears they have. They are also able to walk upright on land, unlike their smaller cousins, the harbour seals.

After spending time with our Sealions, we headed back towards Sechelt, where we had whales the previous day. We found Cassiopeia hanging out by herself, doing some deep diving and showing off that beautiful tail.

Each humpback whale has unique color and scarring on their flukes which help us to ID them on the water. We use telephoto lenses on our cameras to take close up, high detailed photos and then match them to pictures taken in previous years. This way we are able to track habits of individuals over a long period of time.

We left Cassiopeia and headed back to harbour, but were stopped off of Gabriola Island where we found 3 humpbacks doing some feeding dives. These whales were hiding their tails from us today, so we only managed to get dorsal photos. This is still helpful, as often we can ID whales from their dorsals. This whale below doesn’t match any dorsals in our catalogues yet, but we are still searching for a match. It’s a very unique dorsal, so it shouldn’t be hard!

Another mystery whale. We had 3 whales in this group, and we only managed to get good dorsal photos of 2 of them. It can be tricky to ID whales based on their dorsal, as not many of the catalogues have dorsal photos. If we can figure out who these whales are, we can make sure their dorsals end up in the next copy of our catalogue,

All photos today were taken by Marine Naturalist Cheyenne Brewster

We are running daily tours from the Nanaimo Harbour! Book your own whale watching adventure on our website, over the phone, or come check out our new office right on the waterfront.