The sun was shining, the sky was clear, and it was another perfect day to head out whale watching on March 6th! Today our open vessel, Keta, started the journey northward. There had been a shore sighting of orca around the Nanoose Bay area. Once we reached the reported sighting area, the crew realized the whales were being very tricky! Both the Naturalist and Captain onboard spotted blows… and then the whales vanished! We began searching amongst the small islands nearby, seeing if the whales had started travelling along their shores in search of a late lunch. We were not able to spot any whales, but we did find a harbour seal haul-out where over a dozen seals were snoozing away in the sunlight. After leaving the seals, we looped around the Winchelsea Islands - an ecologically-rich group of small islands home to one of the weather stations we use to decide the day’s route.

After taking a quick peek at the Winchelseas and seeing no sign of the orca, we continued back South, cruising along the coastline. After about 15 minutes, we spotted a line of blows near shore - we had found the pod again! The whales were travelling fast towards Neck Point as we observed them. This pod was identified as the T049A’s, minus T049A1. T049A1 is known to break away from his mother’s pod, and has been seen on multiple occasions hanging out with other male orca in their own little bachelor pod.

Nan (T049A) and her pod are well known in our area - her name is actually reference to the city our home port is located in (Nanaimo)! This pod consists of 6 members…or so we thought! Today we also had the joy of seeing Nan’s newest child, T049A6. This youngster is very new, and likely is no more than a few weeks old. This new baby is Nan’s 6th known offspring, along with her 5 other children: T049A1 (Noah), T049A2 (Jude), T049A3 (Nat), T049A4 (Neptune), and T049A5 (Nebula). Her 4 oldest children are males - only little Nebula is a female! Do you think this new baby is a female or a male?

After visiting the T049’s we continued on our search for other wildlife. Today we circled Entrance Island, where we found a couple of harbour seals playing chicken along the rocky shores, and a small colony of Steller Sealions chatting away.

Afterwards we cruised back towards Nanaimo and made a short detour at Harmac to visit our California Sealions. Today they were being quite sleepy, but that did not stop them from barking away and fighting over what spots of the log booms they thought were the best to hang out on.

Today’s photos were taken by Marine Naturalist Cheyenne Brewster.

March 6th - T049A's near Lantzville

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