It was another great, humpback filled day on the water! We left the harbour in search of whales, and it didn't take us long before we saw the blows in the distance! It looked like there were three different whales here. After not too much time we were able to get photos of the underside of all the tail flukes and determined it to be Chinook (BCY0996), Bullet (BCX1658), and Yogi (BCY0409)! These three were travelling together, and seemed to be feeding! We got to see a bit of this at the surface as the whales were lunge feeding! It’s the most common feeding behaviour observed in the waters off British Columbia. A lot of the time they use this method beneath the surface, lunging through schools of small fish or clouds of plankton, but sometimes we are lucky enough to see it at the surface like today!

While travelling and feeding together these three whales were very close together, so close that we thought they were probably touching under the waters surface! With our waters being so high in productivity it reduces the visibility since light gets blocked by all the microorganisms in the water, so we weren’t able to see this for sure. In the winter months when it gets colder and we get less sunlight the visibility in our waters start to clear as there isn’t as much phytoplankton in the water. Phytoplankton are small organisms that use photosynthesis to produce energy in their cells for growth and reproduction. These tiny organisms are the base of our very complex food chain. Small animal-like plankton will feed on the phytoplankton, the zooplankton will then get eaten by larger plankton, then small fish, and so on to the larger organisms.

Animals like the Transient Orca are at the very top of this food chain as apex predators, feeding far up the chain on pinnipeds (mostly). Other whales, like the humpback, get into the food chain at a lower trophic level, feeding on zooplankton (like krill) and smaller schooling fish. There are some benifits to feeding lower on the food chain. They are less likely to accumulate toxins since there is less bioaccumulation at the lower trophic levels. There is also typically more biomass at the lower trophic levels, since energy is lost between each level due to metabolic processes. This means that you usually see less animals as you move up the food chain.

You can imagine this energy loss easier in terrestrial ecosystems, especially with mammals. If you think of a small rodent eating grass for their food this animal is a second trophic level (with grass being level 1). As this animal grows energy is lost as they use the nutrients for moment, heat production, and other uses in their body. If a larger animal then eats this smaller one, only about 10% of the initial energy produced by the grass will get passed to the larger animal. This also explains why ecosystems can sustain more lower trophic level animals and only relatively few apex predators and other high trophic level organisms. Of course, actual ecosystems are much more complicated than this since most animals feed on multiple different trophic levels, like our humpbacks do!

Their large size, and therefore large energy needs, make the humpbacks a very important part of the ecosystem. Our tour felt very lucky to be able to witness these animals feeding in their natural habitat today. Our Marine Naturalist onboard, Vanessa Vereschahen, was able to capture some great moments of the whales and other marine life that we saw during the tour. Enjoy!

November 19th - Yogi, Bullet, and Chinook near Snake Island

© Vancouver Island Whale Watch 2018-2024. All Rights Reserved.