It was a perfect west coast day as our two vessels Kula and Keta left the dock in search of whales! They headed south into the Strait of Georgia and the Southern Gulf Islands to search for Orca and Humpback whales. Our Semi-covered vessel Kula was the first to make contact with a pod of transient orca that they quickly identified as the T049As! This pod has a brand new calf with them that was born this year and has been doing really well.

While searching through the gulf islands the other vessel, Keta, saw a breathtaking sight in the distance, breaching humpbacks! As they came closer to view the whales the breaching stopped and they just continued to travel through Trincomali Channel. One of these humpbacks was identified as MMY0188 Calypso, a humpback who was born in 2019! We were unable to ID the second humpback since they never showed off enough of their tail fluke.

Update from the future! We have recently identified Calypo’s friend as Yakima (BCX2182)! It’s always exciting to get IDs down the line as we get more photos and information about the local whales.

After a while of watching their own respective whales our vessels switched positions so both groups got to see the humpbacks and the orca!

There was lots of great photos taken for the day by our naturalists Janine VDL and Keagan S.