On our trip on the 28th of September we left the harbour in search of some whales and we were not disappointed! Not to far from the harbour we saw the blows of a humpback off in the distance so we went over to investigate. It turns out these two whales were Sherwina and her calf! The calf was being very playful and ended up swimming around upside down for a while while we were with them! Usually in the first year it can be difficult to get pictures of a humpback calfs tail flukes but this year we have been getting pretty lucky! In this case while they were swimming upside down we snapped a couple of pictures and they were also attempting to lift their tail flukes when going for a dive with mom! Until they develop more muscle and larger lungs the calves don’t typically dive as deep and can’t lift their tails out of the water consistently but they are starting to try now that they’re getting older. While watching these two playing in the water we got word that there was a pod of orca spotted nearby so we left our humpbacks behind and headed off!

When we first approached the orca we saw one BIG dorsal moving through the water surrounded by the 3 other members of his family. The large dorsal belonged to T100C Laurel and the smaller fins were his mother T100 Hutchins and siblings T100E Tharaya and T100F Estrella. This pod was travelling through the water when we think they came across something to eat and things got more exciting! They started porpoising and breaching and circling in an area (all of which are good signs that hunting is happening). Once the surface activity stopped we had the gulls move in and start to clean up the leftovers. When we started moving with these guys again a different group of orca was spotted not too far off in the distance. This other group of orca were also hunting from the look of the clouds of gulls above them but then they started moving fast! They were breaching and porpiosing through the water! It was amazing to watch as they jumped in sync with each other off to whatever destination they had in mind. Upon further inspection of the photos in the office this second group was found to be the T036s! This is a group of 5 whales who, unlike the T100s don’t have any mature males in the mix. These smaller dorsals can sometimes be harder to ID but this groups has some pretty apparent notches out of them. The pod consists of T036 Flapjack, T036B Tattertip, T036B1 Bhotia, T036B2 Greenfelder, and T036B3 Chip. Tattertip and Bhotia have easily identifiable notches out of their dorsals so it was them who we used to make this ID. This brings our total orca count for the day up to 9! That’s a pretty big group of transients!

Soon our time was up with our animals and we left to head back towards Nanaimo harbour. During the trip back we saw seals, sea lions, and even some river otters! Overall it was an amazing trip! All of the best photos from our two naturalists Rebeka Pirker and Rebecca Stirling are below.

The T100s. Thats Laurel travelling with his siblings. Photo by Beka Pirker.

Killer whales porpoising. Photo by Beka Pirker.

September 28th - Humpbacks and killer whales in the Strait of Georgia!

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