The morning of the 27th was pretty gusty so we had to cancel the morning tour and wait for the winds to come down. When we made it out on the 3:30 the conditions were great and we were able to locate several humpback whales in the Strait of Georgia!

One of our “regular” was feeding with her new calf just outside of Porlier Pass, near Galiano Island. After getting some good photographs of the dorsal fin and the underside and trailing edge of the fluke, we were able to identify this huge whale as “Divot” (BCX1057). This whale has a divot-shaped piece missing out of the top of the right fluke which makes it a bit easier to tell apart from others in the catalogue.

Keta Coastal Conservation has a free catalogue full of whales that have been seen in the Salish Sea, so if you ever get a fluke shot of a humpback you might be able to ID using this resource! (ketacoastalconservation.org)

Divot and her calf were doing some shallow fluke dives, so our guess is that they were remaining in the top of the water column to look for food. Divot has spent the whole winter down in the warm tropical waters of Hawaii and Mexico giving birth and then nursing and protecting her calf while it develops its blubber layer. In the spring they made the huge migration north to their feeding grounds where mom has been busy feeding ever since. The calf will continue to nurse and will observe and then practice mom’s feeding behaviours. At the end of the year they will travel south again and after that, the relationship between mother and past calves is poorly understood! They might meet up to feed and travel together in future years, or they might not interact again! As much as we’ve already learned about these gentle giants there are always more studies to be done and more mysteries to be solved!

Here are some of the best photos taken during the tour by marine naturalists Cheyenne Brewster and Val Watson.