Today was a whale of a day with plenty Humpbacks feeding off Porlier Pass and we even encountered our T77 Siblings near Entrance Island

Our Humpbacks were in several groups in the morning, with Divot and her calf were practicing deep feeding dives near Porlier Pass. Young Humpbacks are getting their last few diving lessons as feeding season begins to wind down. Humpbacks spend their summers here feeding to put on weight for their migration, as they don’t eat when they reach the breeding grounds.
Calves still rely on mom for her milk but will begin practice foraging in the early fall as they slowly wean off mom’s milk and transition to fishing for themselves. Calves only have one year with their mom so it’s very important to get these foraging lessons in the late summer so mom can make sure they know how to forage on their own for next feeding season.

After leaving our mom and calf pair we came across Jackson and Snoopy. Jackson is a whale we have yet to encounter this year and has a very beautiful and unique tail. He was hanging out with Snoopy, one of the whales we’ve seen quite a lot this year. These two, like Divot and her calf, were enjoying a delicious lunch. Male Humpbacks use their extra energy during breeding season when competing for a female’s attention. Male Humpbacks have many tools they use to woo the ladies. One of these tools is their impressive mating song. Humpbacks are said to have the most complex song in all the animal kingdom. This song is shared by all humpbacks in the same population, yet this song is constantly changing. Researchers are studying Humpbacks songs to learn how they choose what parts of the song change, and it looks like the song changes based on which whales they spend their feeding season around , not their breeding season. We get whales from Mexico, Hawaii and Central America in our waters, so this research suggests that if we have more Hawaii whales one year, the song all our whales sing will be more influenced by the Hawaiian population.

The last group of whales we saw this morning was our T77 Sibling duo. Neftali and Alcyon were seen traveling around Gabriola Island. It’s been months since this duo parted ways from their pod and we are patiently waiting to see their reunion.

In the afternoon we found ourselves in Humpback soup! We had 6 whales hanging out in the same area. This group consisted of Jackson and Snoopy from the morning, but also Delta, Anvil, and 2 other whales. As fall approaches our Humpbacks seem to collect in larger numbers outside Nanaimo. Humpbacks that spend most of their summer up in the Johnstone strait will often slowly migrate down and spend the last few weeks of feeding season off the East coast of Vancouver Island as they prepare to head to the feeding grounds. This means we often get some new groups of whales hanging out near us and larger groups of whales in general. This group on particular was pretty active, breeching, pec slapping, tail slapping and lunge feeding. They must have found a good bait ball, which would explain why we had 6 whales playing and feeding in one area.

Check out the awesome photos taken on our morning and afternoon trips by our Naturalists.

T77’s. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster (10:30)

T77 siblings. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster (10:30)

September 4th - 7 Humpbacks and 2 Orcas!

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