May 28th 10:30 AM - Infamous Chainsaw and his mother Whidbey II by Entrance Island

The weather was perfect and the sun was shining when we had all three of our vessels leave Nanaimo Harbour for our morning trip. Although there weren’t any reports for the morning our guests and crew weren’t feeling discouraged, they were sure they would be able to find something!

This hope wasn’t misplaced as there were blows spotted from one of the open vessels. They headed in that direction, careful not to get too close to the whales as distances can be hard to judge when it’s so flat calm out. Once they got a good look at the whales it was easy to tell, it was T063 Chainsaw and his mom, T065 Whidbey II!

Today these two were just calmly travelling by themselves, having his huge dorsal fin cutting through the calm waters as she surfaced further away from her son.

These two have been travelling together since Chainsaw was born, back in 1978. It’s very common to have male orca stick with their moms throughout their entire lives. Orca are very much momma boys!

These two were in a curious mood today since they made a run at all three of our vessels! Lucky for us the captains have fast reflexes and turned their engines off before the direction change and close pass by these two. It made for some real excitement for the guests during the morning as it’s hard to really tell how big these animals are until they come closer like that. It’s never something we expect to happen during a tour but when it does, all we can do is shut down and float until they get the required distance away from us again.

After watching Chainsaw and Whidbey II we left to find some other wildlife including Seals, Sea lions, and some sea birds as well!

It was a amazing trip getting to see one of the most famous transient orca in our waters!

Please enjoy the photos from the day taken by our marine naturalists onboard; Beka, and Janine.