During our afternoon tour today we traveled back south looking for our Humpbacks from the morning. Instead we found a pair of Orcas! The T77 siblings were traveling around the East shores of Galiano Island. This Duo has been featured in many of our blogs over the last month, as they’ve been traveling with Jude, a male from an unrelated pod. Jude has left them for the time being, hopefully returning to his own family. This sibling duo is made of T77C, Neftali, a 15 year old male and T77D, Alcyon, an 11 year old girl. It’s normal for young males to leave their pods when they hit puberty to explore the seas on their own, but it’s not as normal for young females to do this. Neftali is also a very small male, so small in fact we thought Neftali might actually be a female. Turns out, he is just a late bloomer and we’ve noticed his fin beginning to sprout in just the few short weeks we’ve spent watching him.

We hope to see these 2 reunited with their pod soon.

On our way home from the Orcas we came across Corona, also known as Phi. This Humpback is an entanglement survivor! 2 years ago Corona was seen in the Strait with what looked like a crab pot line wrapped around her pectoral fin and through her mouth. This line would have made travel difficult and feeding even more difficult. DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) was alerted to her condition and they went looking to free her, but were unable to. Thankfully she was seen later, free from the line. She must have managed to break it herself and got free, which was great news, as in 2020 Corona returned to our waters with a brand new calf. This means she was pregnant when she was entangled and if the entanglement hadn’t been broken and she wasn’t able to feed or travel properly, she could have lost her calf, or worse, they both could have passed

Over 50% of our Humpbacks bare the scars of entanglement from fishing gear. Most Whales that pass away are never recovered as their bodies sink in the ocean, so it’s likely we lose whales every year due to these unfortunate entanglements. In an effort to combat this problem the Canadian government is piloting a project on the East Coast to encourage Commercial fishing companies to use new “easy break gear” in their nets and lines that are left unattended. This gear has weak break points that will make it easier for whales or other animals to get free if they should become trapped in it. Hopefully this program will see a reduction in entanglements events and if it does we hope to see the program expanded to the west coast as well.

Below are some photos of our lovely whales and wildlife from the tours taken by our Marine Naturalists.