July 2nd - Noah and Judy near Nanaimo and a Grey whale

Our 10:30 tours left the docks with 15 passengers between Cascadia and Kula, all eager to find whales to watch on a beautiful morning. Our boats searched along the shores of the Gulf islands before finding a pair of Orcas traveling through Dodd’s Narrows.
Noah (T49A1) and Judy/Jude (T49A2) were heading North through the narrows and along the shores of Mudge and Gabriola Island. They were doing some hunting, spy hopping and even stopping to examine the boats a bit when they were shut down. This allowed our Naturalists Brad and Ryan to get some beautiful photos of the brothers.

These 2 brothers have been traveling around the Nanaimo area for a few weeks now, separate from their family. The rest of their family was spotted near Nanaimo a few days ago, but seem to have gone back north without the brothers. They’re Batchelor trip doesn’t appear to be over just yet.

You can really see the scaring in Judy’s saddle patch here, as well as the tiny notch near the top of his fin. These are both used to ID him when he’s with his family, and soon enough his dorsal will be just as big as Noah’s.

Eye patches are another way you can ID individual Orcas. This often comes in handy when you’re trying to figure out which whale is spy hopping, or if everyone in the pod has very similar dorsal fins. In this situation we can tell who Noah and Nat are because of the size difference, but they’re eye patches are still very cute to see.

Orcas and other whales will often spy hop, where they lift their head out of the water, in order to get a good view of things going on around the water. Judy clearly wanted to do some human watching while we did some whale watching.

These 2 photos are an excellent example of how different things can look on the water just based on position. These photos were taken at the same time. In the top photo it looks like Noah is about to crash right into Judy. However, in the bottom photo it looks like Noah is a decent distance and might actually be going behind Judy. Often things become compressed in photos, so it’s hard to tell exactly how far away 2 object are, or even their exact position around each other.

During our tours we don’t just see whales. We make an effort to stop and see Harbour Seals and Birds, and depending on the time of year, we also stop to see Stellar sea lions and California Sea Lions.

On todays morning trip we got to see our Harbour seals and some Stellar sea lions before we returned to the harbour. All of our California Sea lions have gone south for breeding season, and our Stellar sea lions won’t be around much longer before they head north for their breeding season.

There’s still one large male hanging around entrance island, with a small group of ladies. This male will head North soon, and the girls should follow. Male Stella Sea lions are considered adults when they are over 9 years old. Females will produce a single pup, and mate within 1 week of giving birth. These pups can stay with their mom for up to 3 years, still nursing, but most will wean off their mothers milk by the end of their first year.

Harbour seals are also in their breeding and pupping season right now, but they don’t travel for this, instead they just have their pups at their usual haul out sites. This is because Harbour seal pups only hang out with mom for a couple weeks, growing quickly and weaning off moms milk in just 4-6 weeks.

Some Oyster Catchers looking for lunch. Photo by Ryan

Our 3:30 tour left the docks and headed for where we had left Noah and Judy earlier. We caught up with the pair now traveling South near Valdes Island. The evening light made for some excellent photos by our Marine Naturalist Ryan.

The brothers were doing lots of traveling this evening, and din’t seem too interested in a nearby seal. The Seal however seemed more than a little troubled by their presence. He was keeping a watchful eye out,

After leaving Noah and Judy we turned to head home but were stopped by a surprise whale. We’ve seen grey whales on a few of our tours now. We don’t often get these guys near Nanaimo so it’s been a treat to have a few of them hanging out around our area this year. We aren’t sure what has brought them to our neighbourhood, but we hope they stick around a while.

Unlike humpbacks and other baleen whales, Grey whales do not have dorsal fins. Instead they have a small hump and 6-12 dorsal “knuckles” along their spine. Can you see the knuckles in the photo above?

While most of our Stellar sea lions head north for breeding season, we have a small group of females who decide to stay behind every year. They like to hang out on the buoys around the Gabriola reefs. This female was enjoying a nap by herself. Its not often they get the buoy to themselves, often we see between 6 and a dozen of them stacked on top of each other out there. With such limited space we have to wonder why they don’t move to one of the many nearby rocks and islands. This buoy must be something extra special to bring them back every year.

Our afternoon harbour seals seemed all too happy to enjoy the sun. Many of them appeared to be smiling, especially the 2 below.

This seal looks like he couldn’t be bothered to get out of the water before taking a nap. Harbour seals can slow their heart rate and actually sleep under water. How cool is that!

We’ve been having an incredible season to far this year with many Orca, Humpback and even Grey whale sightings. If you’d like to watch whales in their natural habitat, doing natural whale things, book a tour on one of our open or semi-covered vessels and enjoy all the beauty the Salish Sea has to offer.
You can book online, over the phone, or in person in our new waterfront office in downtown Nanaimo.

*All whale watching regulations are followed during the tour and photos are taken on a telephoto lens and cropped for detail. The health and safety of our whales is one of our top priorities during the tours.

Jilann LechnerJuly 5, 2021Comment