Early in October we had a rare day where there were no boats going out for tours, so we decided to take a trip with the staff and see which whales were hanging out up north. We’d spent a lot of time recently off Gabriola Island with our Humpback soup and wanted to see who else was around.

We left Nanaimo and began travelling north toward Parksville. Just outside Nanoose, we had our first whales. 3 blows and 3 tails appeared and disappeared above the water. We got into position and waited patiently for their return. We were quick to ID one of the whales as Nike (BCX1377), someone who had been part of the southern soup over the last few days. Looks like he went north to find his friends and bring them back south to the party. Nike’s friends were not as easy to ID. The next match was Ghost (BCX1333), someone we don’t see too often. Ghost has almost no markings on their tail, except for some very faint white on the left side. We mostly used the trailing edge to ID this whale. The third friend was a bit trickier, as they weren’t lifting their tail very high and the lighting was giving too much shadow to see great ID marks. Again we had to rely on the trailing edge of the tail to get the ID and, eventually, we did find our whale. It was MMY0223. They don’t have a fancy nickname, yet, but one day they will. This trio continued heading south, evidently, as we found them during a regular tour a few days later.

After saying our goodbyes we continued north where we found a small whale circling just south of Qualicum. Initially, we didn’t get any flukes from this whale, but we were able to get a dorsal match to Grazes’ 2019 calf. Toward the end of our time with them, we did get a fluke shot and were able to verify that we were right.

Towards the shore, there were blows from another whale, but as we looked north we could see a group of 2. We planned to ID the group of 2 and then go see who our lone whale was.
This pair turned out to be Vanta (BCX1730) and Diamond (BCY1060)! We’ve seen both these whales previously this year, and while Vanta is someone we see a few times a year, Diamond was a new whale for us when we first spotted them a few weeks back up between Texada and the mainland.

Before we got a chance to go see our lone whale along the shores we saw more spouts in the distance. We bunny hopped up, knowing we could see our shoreline whale on the way home and stopped to see the soup.
As we arrived with the next group of whales, now just south of Denman Island, we watched as a group of 2 surfaced further north. Another group of 2 to the east. 2 more in the distance behind them. 2 singles read out a little ways off. There were easily 9 whales we could see, and likely more in the area. It was full-on Humpback soup!

The first whale to give us a tail was someone we were excited to see. The seal whale surfaced, lifting its tail high into the air, and a chorus from the boat rang out. Scorch /Smoke! Scorch was a humpback we first encountered last summer, an unknown whale in our waters. At the time they were only a year old, we didn’t know that though, as we couldn’t match them to any whales in our catalogues. We encountered them a few weeks later but didn’t recognize it at the time as they had gotten a new, rather large, scar. The mark was still fresh and pink, resembling a sunburn, thus earning his name Scorch. Over the winter one of our staff, Cheyenne Brewster, was able to ID this little whale thanks to Happy Whale. Their official name is Smoke, the 2020 calf to Flame, an Alaskan humpback. Smoke, or Scorch as we call him, should have gone back to Alaska last year as their mom showed them. However, for one reason or another, they ended up here in the Salish Sea. We were curious whether they would return to Alaska this year and were surprised to find them in the spring hanging out with their friends from last year. Scorch does not have a confirmed gender at this point, and is still young, only 2 years old, but they seem to be doing well!

Travelling near Scorch was MMX0298 and BCX1301 2021 Calf. These whales were tricky to ID, as many of them we’ve never seen before. We got to add so many new whales to our list today it was amazing.
Near Scorch and his friends we also ID’ed Schooner, the 2021 calf of zigzag (BCX1193) and 3 others!

After many days of combing through photos, we were able to ID one of our unknown whales as Kelpie (MMY0220). Kelpie was a little whale we first encountered in 2021 when they breached a single time and vanished. We found them a few days later just off Pipers lagoon rolling in the kelp and parading it around on their nose like a new toy. Thus earning her the nickname Kelpie. Kelpie had very light grey skin when we first saw her. Whatever condition she had seems to have cleared up but has left her with very speckled and marked skin. Unfortunately, she never fluked for us during this trip but we were able to match up her dorsal. This was our first sighting of her this year, so the senior staff were very excited by the ID as it means she has returned to our region and hopefully we will continue to see her in the future.

Enjoy the photos taken by our naturalists, Cheyenne Brewster and Rebeka Pirker.

October Staff Trip to Humpback land!

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