We had an unusual morning on the 18th when we spent some time with the Northern Residents! This is a rare occasion where we will be seeing open saddle patches and the hooked dorsal fins that are commonly seen in the resident orca. I’m sure some of you are thinking… why are these guys watching resident orca?? Well the northern resident orca are actually a healthy growing population of whales who have over 300 individuals! The northern residents are classified into 3 categories: Clan, Pod, and Matriline. This group was the A42 matriline who are part of A5 pod and the A clan.

You can see in the photos below how we can tell a transient orca from a resident. If you look closely you will see on the male, A66 “Surf”, a dark line that goes through the front of his saddle patch. This line is what makes his saddle patch “open” since it makes the white part of the patch form more of a “U” shape than a solid blob. Not all resident orca will have the open saddle patch, and some will only have it present on one side of their body, not both so it can make it tricky sometimes to spot.

Another feature of the resident orca is the shape of their dorsal fins. The males will sometimes have a forward curve to their tall dorsals and the females and younger males who haven’t sprouted yet have a “hook” shape to the top of their dorsals. The transient orca have much straighter, pointy dorsals than this.

The final and most accurate way to tell if the orca you are looking at is resident or transient ecotype is by figuring out exactly who it is you’re looking at! every whale in the Salish sea and northern parts of the island are very heavily researched and their population tracked. Since they are keeping such close tabs on our orca there are photos allowing you to cross match down to the individual you’re looking at! If you figure out who it is then you know for sure whether they are a transient or a resident ecotype.

Since we don’t watch the critically endangered southern resident orca getting to see this healthy example of resident orca was very interesting! They have different behaviours because of the difference in their diets and hunting styles so it was interesting to be able to see these differences first hand instead of just researching them! It will be interesting to see what this pod does in the future and whether we will ever see them down in our range again but only time will tell!

We also saw some humpback whales during the morning tour! Humpback whale “Snoopy” showed off its beautiful and unique fluke for our guests and our naturalists managed to snag a photo. The fluke photo is the ideal photo to get because the underside of each fluke is unique like a human fingerprint. By documenting the flukes we are able to help local researcher monitor the growing population of humpback whales along our coast.

Please enjoy all the photos taken by our three Marine Naturalists during this tour!