Our first trip in December! The winter weather we have been experiencing all December finally let up enough for us to get a tour out! We all boarded our semi-covered vessel, Kula, and headed out on the Salish Sea to see what whales we could find! Today was rather cold so both the staff and guests were thankful for the heated cabin as they cruised around looking for whales. The search first took them to northern Nanaimo but when nothing surfaced for us we decided to head over to a hotspot; the Sunshine Coast!

We started the journey across the Strait of Georgia and it wasn’t long until we saw the blow in the distance! As we approached we saw more blows and then a huge tail lift up out of the water, propelling this humpback whale for a dive! This tail was immediately recognized by the staff onboard as one of the female humpback whales of our area: BCX0915 Fallen Knight! Although Fallen Knight is an X whale and doesn’t have many distinct pigmentation spots on her fluke she is still very easy to ID based on the shape of her fluke. The right fluke curls in, almost to a 90-degree angle! While we are unsure of exactly how she got this deformity to her fluke she has had it since she was first recorded! Sightings in BC of this animal stretch back to at least 2003, and she had been recorded with a calf in both 2019 and 2021!

Fallen Knight has been cross-matched to Hawaii as her breeding ground, which she will likely be headed to in not too much time now. The exact timing of the Humpback Whale Migration does vary with each individual humpback but in general starts in mid-late fall. We will soon not be seeing humpbacks in our waters until the spring/summer when they return from their southern breeding grounds!

Humpback migration is the longest recorded of any mammal on earth! It will be interesting to see if we keep seeing our whales later into the winter as they seemed to be later arriving this year than we have previously seen. If you want your chance for your very own humpback encounter before they’re gone for the year, you can join one of our tours! We are running until December 22 2022 and will reopen on January 19th, 2023!

After watching Fallen Knight we headed over to White Islets where there were a ton of Steller Sea Lions hauled out on the rock. They are also migratory, and are found in our waters in their highest numbers right now! They spend their winters here and then will migrate north to their breeding grounds in the summer. We soon left these animals as well and started to head back toward Nanaimo, continuing our wildlife search along the way. We ended up stopping near the Harmac pulp mill which has log booms tied near the shore which the California Sea Lions will commonly haul out on. Today there was a bunch of them there and we watched as they noisily barked away.

As the vessel was returning to the dock, Naturalist Vanessa noticed a favourite sight in the harbour, a small family of river otters that call it home! Today these small mammals won the hearts of our guests by cuddling, cleaning each other, and showing off their hilarious “poop dance”. You can see in the photos the mess that they leave on the docks. They’ve also been known for targeting boats for their bathroom as well as eating boat wiring! But today they were just on the dock and we enjoyed watching them interact with each other while sending a curious glance our way once in a while. It was the perfect end to a great trip!

Due to technical difficulties, photos taken by Marine Naturalist Vanessa were lost, but luckily another naturalist Aly was along for the ride! Please enjoy Aly’s photos from the trip which are included below!

December 12th - Fallen Knight near the Sunshine Coast!

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