February 18th - Sealion Experience... with whales!

On the 18th we left the harbour excited to visit our sealions and seals. Our Sealion Experiences are a shorter tour that allows our guests to experience the beauty of our coast while being able to be back on dry land a bit sooner than our usual trips.

Today we headed out and towards Snake Island - a favourite sunning location for our Harbour Seals. It is typical to see a dozen or so of them snoozing away on the rocks, enjoying the sun’s warmth and sheltered waters that the island provides. Everything was going well, we even spotted some eagles while visiting the seals… when all of a sudden we spotted Biggs orca nearby! Now, we are not specifically looking for whales when we are on our Sealion Tours - but we will stop to see them long enough to get ID’s for our records. Today we had the T037A’s who were busy hunting. They were not surfacing very often, but they were up long enough for us to spot T037A4 (Crinkle), a juvenile female in the group. Crinkle is a very distinct orca - her dorsal fin bends at a 90° angle. While it is possible her fin may straighten as she grows, at this point it continues to be a prominent feature on her and makes her very easy to spot amongst her pod members. Crinkle’s brother T037A2 (Inky) is also very easy to spot - and he was hogging the spotlight today! His dorsal fin has a distinct notch half way down. He also has a small white spot on the right side of the base of his dorsal fin, and a distinct bump where his dorsal meets his saddle patch (grey-white patch behind the dorsal). Can you spot all this distinctive features on Inky in the photos below?

T037A2 Inky.

After our surprise orca encounter we continued our adventure, this time looking for Steller and California Sealions. We had a quick stop at Entrance Island to see the lighthouse and some snoozing sealions. After Entrance, we started heading back towards Nanaimo towards a different sealion haulout. Much to our surprise… we found MORE orca along the way! We did not stick around for long (remember our goal was to see sealions after all!), but we did grab some ID photos before we continued on. This time it was the T036’s and T099’s crossing through Dodd’s Narrows and heading South. After figuring out who they were we continued our adventure.

Go away, this is my nap spot!

We stopped and saw loads of Sealions on the log booms right beside the Cable Bay Trail. They were chatting away as we approached. Today we had a mix of both Steller and Californians up on the booms. This spot is usually covered in Californians, but every once in a while a big Steller decides to have a snooze amongst its much smaller California cousins.

Today’s photos were taken by Marine Naturalist Rebecca Stirling.

Look at those teeth!

Smile for the camera!