10:30 Tour:
On the morning of August 4th our boats ventured out, searching for Humpbacks and Orcas. Our boats traveled north around Gabriola Island and we found a familiar face near Entrance Island. A little humpback we have come to know as Kelpie. One of the first times Kelpie was spotted was several weeks ago near Pipers Lagoon. When we came across this young one, likely to be in their first solo year given their size, they were lazily rolling around the surface of the water with kelp draped over their nose. They repeatedly lifted their nose up, as if to show everyone their kelp, thus earning this little one the nickname “Kelpie”. This is not their official nickname, as we have yet to be able to match them to any existing catalogs, however, if we can’t match them to a catalog it could likely become their official name.

Kelpie was fluking and doing deep feeding dives, filling their belly in preparation for their long journey to the breeding grounds in the fall.

After our boats left Kelpie they traveled south and found a pod of Orcas traveling near Valdes island. The T46’s are a common pod to our area, consisting of Wake (T46), Centiki (T122), and Wake’s 3 sons, Strider (T46D, 2000), Thor (T46E, 2003) and Loki (T46F, 2012). This pod was enjoying the day as the traveled through the Strait of Georgia, stopped to play a bit from time to time. Orcas are highly social and family oriented animals, and play time with the family is very important to help strengthen and maintain those bonds.

Below are some photos of the morning tour taken by Marine Naturalists Cheyenne Brewster, Brad Farrow, Rebecca Stirling and Ryan Uslu.

3:30 Tour:

As the afternoon tour departed the docs we had hopes of relocating some of our whales from the morning tour. One of our boats was able to relocate Kelpie, in roughly the same area. They were still diving and showing off their tail and then even treated the boat to a breach!

After leaving Kelpie our three boats joined up to find another set of familiar faces. A trio of Orcas traveling near Mayne Island. This trio consisted of Jude (T49A2, 2007) and the T77 siblings. Neftali (T77C, 2006), and Alcyon (T77D, 2009), have been traveling with Jude for some time. They were originally a bachelor quartet, with Jude’s older brother Noah in the group, but Noah left the bachelor party a few weeks ago.
Since then we’ve seen these 3 still traveling together a few times. We are unsure as to why this trio is out and about alone. Jude is the only one who is confirmed to be a male, Neftail is 15 years old, they should have begun to sprout a tall dorsal fin at this point if they were a male. and Alcyon is 12 years old, so they have just hit puberty and wouldn’t be showing just yet if they were a male. It’s not uncommon for young male Orcas to go out and explore the world away from moms side, so it would make sense for these 3, if they were all male, to be off on their own. But with Neftali and Alcyon possibly being female, this is leaving us wondering what these three are up to. On this day however, these 3 were traveling North along Mayne hunting, spy hopping and pec slapping.

After leaving our trio of Orcas our boats headed north for home. Along the way we came across a humpback duo. Anvil and Smiley were traveling and feeding just north of where our Orcas were hanging out. Anvil and Smiley are pair we’ve seen together a few times since this sighting. While Humpbacks are thought to travel primarily alone outside of breeding grounds, every year we have small groups that seem to travel together. We aren’t sure why but we have noticed a pattern emerging, that expecting adult females were spending a lot of time in pairs throughout the feeding seasons. After seeing these 2 together so often we will be keeping our eyes open to see if either brings a calf back next year.

Below are some photos taken during the tour by marine naturalists Cheyenne Brewster and Ryan Uslu.