June 26th - A jam-packed day with 5 humpback whales, seals, sea lions, cormorants and a bald eagle!

We had a pretty wild day during our tour with 3 separate humpback encounters in an hour! The first pair our open boat Keta located was a well known cow-calf pair known as Slate (BCX1210) and calf. This pair has been seen regularly over the last couple of weeks, and Slate is a known regular in the Salish Sea. While we were unable to get fluke photos (pictures of the underside of their tails), which is what we usually use to ID individuals, we were able to get dorsal shots that confirmed their ID’s. Slate has a very unique dorsal fin - it has a very smooth, hooked edge similar to a bird of prey’s beak.

Besides humpbacks, we were also fortunate enough to spot harbour seals, Stellar sealions, cormorants, and a bald eagle during this tour.

All photos from this trip were taken by Marine Naturalist Brad. Photos were taken with a telephoto lens on a crop sensor camera, and may have been cropped further for social media.

Slate with her calf

After spending some time with Slate and calf, our vessel encountered another humpback close by. This humpback did fluke for us, giving us a perfect ID shot. This whale was ID’d as Nuage (KEX0009). Nuage has a distinct hooked marking in the middle of their fluke which you can see in our photos below.

Nuage

Nuage

After leaving Nuage, our vessel encountered another pair of humpbacks nearby. Unfortunately this pair was being elusive and doing very long dives. We were unable to acquire ID photos for this duo.

We work closely with Keta Costal Conservation who release one of the catalogues we use for IDing individual humpbacks. This catalogue is available for use by the general public here. This catalogue is being updated regularly as new photos are collected and new whales are seen. If you like to watch whales, even if it is just from shore, this is a great document to have on hand!

Come beat the heat with us on a tour today! We are running daily tours out of Nanaimo on both our open and semi-covered boat. Head to our bookings page to see our live schedule and book online or call us at 250-667-5177 to book over the phone.