On our Aug 17th tour we found our favorite humpback duo, Slate and her son Marble hanging out in their usual spot near Porlier pass. In the morning these 2 were traveling and diving, looking for tasty food below the waves. In the afternoon Marble gave one of our boats a nice close pass, rolling and splashing in the waters, showing off their big beautiful fluke. Mom was keeping a much closer eye on Marble today, doing some deep dives while Marble swam circles around us, but always coming back to see how he was doing.
Slate and Marble had one more friend near them today in the afternoon, who showed up only a few times.

The first time they showed up our boats had been watching Slate and Marble for a while, and a new face appeared, trumpeting as they surfaced. They never fluked, but based on their size and behaviour, we guessed it might be Olympus. Olympus is known to be a vocal whale, and was the humpback who charged into an orca t-party back in July.

After leaving our humpbacks we made our way to look for seals and sea lions when we got a call that there was a pod of orcas moving through Dodd’s Narrows. We turned and raced back through the gulf islands to try and find them. We managed to catch up with 4 Orcas, swimming passed Jack Point heading towards Snake Island.

These 4 whales were ID’ed as the T46’s, with one missing member, T46D Strider. Strider is an adult male orca, so it’s not uncommon for them to venture away from their pod to seek other social interactions. (Since this encounter Strider has returned to his family).

The T46’s are lead by Wake, a female who is approx. 55 years old. Wake travels with another adult female, Centeki. This relationship is a bit odd, as Centeki was first recorded on her own, and then with the T46’s, she has her own number. She is old enough to have had her own calves and be traveling on her own, if she was Wake’s daughter. However, she doesn’t have calves that we know of. This leads to a few hypothesis. Centeki could be Wake’s daughter, but has never been successful in having calves, or, that Centeki is actually older than Wake, and potentially Wake’s mom.

Along with Centeki, Wake also travels with her 3 boys, typically. Strider, her oldest boy, Thor, T46E and Loki T46F. This group was traveling slowly, heading out into the Strait of Georgia when we left them to make our way to the harbour.

Did you know? A humpback has a relatively small brain in comparison to their body weight at only 4,675 g/approx. 10 lbs. brain compared to their approx. 30,000 kg body (0.0002% of their body weight). A large male Orca for reference has a brain about 5,620 g/approx. 12.5 lbs. compared to their approx. 5,400 kg body (0.001% of their body weight).

Check out the pictures taken by our marine naturalists Rebeka, Rebecca and Cheyenne below!