Today our T18s were once again travelling among the Gulf Islands. This pod seems to particularly like hunting in Trincomali Channel as this is where we have had multiple encounters with them in the past couple of days. This pod consists of 4 members: Matriarch Esperanza (T18), her daughter Nootka (T19), and Nootka’s two sons Galiano (T19B) and Spouter (T19C). Of these four, Galiano is usually the easiest individual to spot. He has a very large dorsal fin with a distinct leftwards lean to it, and there is also a large notch about a third of the way down the back edge of the fin. Galiano’s dorsal fin is also unique because it remains very wide all the way up the dorsal, where as most dorsal fins tend to taper off near the tip.

This is an interesting pod because we do not have confirmed evidence that Nootka is actually Esperanza’s daughter. Esperanza is estimated to be about 66 years old, being born around 1955. Nootka is estimated to be about 56 years old, being born around 1965. Some people speculate that Nootka may actually be older than Esperanza, but due to limited scientific resources and knowledge regarding orca back in the 50’s and 60’s, a lot of this information will still be unable to be confirmed unless DNA testing is done on both individuals.

We also had one other whale among the typical four T18’s today who we identified as Jude (T49A2). Jude is a known wanderer, and has been spotted away from his pod regularly for weeks now. While this would normally be considered unusual, today was a very special day - there were 46 Transient orca identified within the Salish Sea! 11 different pods (and another 5 individuals that were not travelling with their pods) between Galiano Island and the Southern tip of Lopez Island were identified by the numerous whale watching companies in the area and other whale watchers from shore today. This is very remarkable because it is common to only see 3 to 4 pods in this entire area at a time. We suspect that this fifth individual was a member from one of the other pods that was simply coming by to say hello to our T18’s before it returned to its own pod.

After watching this pod of orcas, we found 2 humpback whales near Porlier Pass. These two humpbacks we found were Ocular and Olympus! We can identify each humpback due to their flukes. Each humpback has a different fluke (like our fingerprints) and help us tell them apart. Olympus and Ocular surprised our boats as we got “mugged” by them briefly. A humpback mugging happens when they get really close to your boat and interact with it for a period of time.

Photos taken by Marine Naturalists Cheyenne Brewster and Ryan Uslu.