On this lovely morning we found ourselves traveling along the Sunshine coast, our eyes scanning the horizon for blows. It wasn’t long before we saw the plumes of mist rising from the water. We found our Humpbacks!
2 large whales surfaced and exhaled, a fine grey mist spouting from the surface. The backs arching out of the water, higher and higher, before their large tails curved through the sky.

Geometry and Poptart were doing feeding dives near Halfmoon Bay, which is north of Sechelt on the Sunshine coast.
Humpbacks will surface several times after a feeding dive, catching their breath before making their way down again. You’ll often see their dorsals rising out of the water, arching a little higher every time, until finally they start their descent. Lifting their heavy tails into the sky to help propel them straight down in the water, to find the balls of bait fish and krill that they feed on.
For most of our humpbacks it’s these feeding dives we wait for, as the underside of their tails are how we ID Humpbacks. Some of our Humpbacks can be ID’ed by their dorsal fins, but for the most part we rely on the patterns on their tails as well as the edge of their tail fin. Finding out which Humpbacks we are watching is actually pretty important information, as it lets us more accurately track the Humpbacks populations as well as proving information on which areas are crucial feeding sites. It’s also very important if a whale is entangled or injured, so we can alert the appropriate people to help those whales.
The ID information also helps us to learn more about Humpback social behaviors. The more data we collect on Humpbacks and who they hang out with can help give us insights into whether or not our whales have long-term social bonds with each other, or if their connections are one-off social events before the whales part ways. There is still so little known about Humpbacks and their social habits - especially with our Salish Sea Humpbacks. Humpbacks were extirpated from our waters in the early 1900’s and only made a return in the early 2000’s. Since then our population of returning whales has boomed and we are starting to learn more and more about these whales.

Check out some of the cool photos below taken by our Naturalists Brad, Vanessa and Cheyenne.

August 28th 10:30 - Geometry and Poptart

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