We had two boats that left the harbour today, Keta and Cascadia, our two open boats! They took slightly different routes to go over to an area we have deemed “humpback land”!

Cascadia went over the top of Gabriola Island, past Entrance Island, where they saw the blows from a humpback whale! It was actually two humpbacks travelling together, one of which we IDed as Ocular (KEX0019). Ocular is usually easy to tell who it is from the intense scarring that has been left from entanglement along the peduncle (or the bottom of the tail). Ocular also has a very obvious notch out of the right side of their tail flukes. Today Oculars friend didn’t cooperate and we didn’t manage to get an ID from them. After watching Ocular and friend for a while, we continued south toward a report of even more humpbacks!

While Cascadia was watching Ocular and friend, Keta had taken the south side of Gabriola Island and came across two humpbacks of their own travelling near the Flat Top Islands. These two humpbacks were Fader (BCX0195) and Trooper (KEX0026). The two were travelling together and seemed to be doing feeding dives. Trooper usually doesn’t show off their tail flukes, but due to a ship strike that occurred in 2018, they have a very distinct scar behind their dorsal fin, making them very easy to ID, even without a tail. Fader is a whale that usually gives nice big flukes while we are watching them, making ID very easy. Fader also has a very beautiful and distinct fluke, with the main marking we use to ID being a white curved scar on the right tail fluke.

As Cascadia was travelling south towards the other sighting they came across another humpback whale, Neowise (BCY0160 calf 2020)! If you’ve been reading our blogs this year you may recognize Neowise. He has been known for putting on a bit of a show when we are watching him and sometimes becoming curious about the boats. Today was no exception as Neowise did a quick roll beside Cascadia and swam right underneath it then continued travelling with the odd tail flick into the air. Our boats now came together and were watching Neowise at the same time, until suddenly another whale crossed their path. This young whale was IDed as Slice (BCX1057 calf 2021). Slice went right between our boats, luckily both boats were already shut down. It resulted in the two photos with the boats in the background, the same moment from different angles!

Cascadia left Neowise behind and started watching Trooper! He had moved from where Keta was watching him with Fader near the flat top islands to Mid-Gabriola island where he was now solo. We got to see a few surfaces before he dove. As Trooper dove the last time we saw something biologists always get excited about, poop! Humpback poop is a pink colour due to their krill diet and causes a little red cloud to form in the water, usually when they dive. It’s an interesting thing, since they do most of their feeding below the water where the planktonic animals that they feed on are most commonly found, but they poop at the surface. This is a sort of Nitrogen pump since they are moving nutrients from further down in the water column to the surface. It’s theorized that this is a type of ecosystem engineering that humpbacks do! Since their food source relies on nutrients and sunlight at the surface to grow moving the nutrients there is not only beneficial for the ecosystem as a whole, but also benefits the humpbacks by increasing their own food. This could also contribute to the humpback hotspots that we see through the Salish Sea, if there are more humpbacks there’s more poop moving nutrients to the surface and therefore more food for the humpbacks there and so on. It’s a positive feedback loop that would continue to make the environment better and better for the humpbacks.

It was finally time to leave humpback land, our boats stopped for seals at Saturnina Island before continuing inside the Southern Gulf Islands towards Nanaimo when suddenly another humpback appears, its Strike (KEX0045)! She has been in the same area for a while now, and today gave us some insight as to why. We figured there was lots of food there for her, hence why she would spend so much time here. Today she was demonstrating feeding behaviour, doing fast lunges at the surface and rapid dives. We watched her for a while before time ran out and we had to continue to Nanaimo, but not before making a quick stop for the sea lions at Harmac!

Our onboard naturalists Aly Kohlman and Vanessa Vereschahen captured a lot of amazing moments from the trip which you can see below!