June 15th 10:30 AM - T023C's near Nanaimo Harbour, Strike the Humpback by Neck Point!

Earlier this year we spent a bit of time with the T023’s (Links to those blogs at the end of this one!) as they travelled around the Salish Sea. Today we got to hang out with their sister pod, the T023C’s! Cindy was cruising by Nanaimo with her family in tow. Durban, Bunzie, and T023C5 followed their mom pasted the Harmac pulp mill and out past Protection island. This family was on a mission today, travelling fast and not easily distracted by anything nearby.

From looking at the sightings info for this pod we can see they love to travel! They have sightings reports ranging from northern Alaska all the way to Victoria and on both the east and west sides of Vancouver Island. We watched these guys heading out past Protection island and that’s when we came across our second sighting of the day, a humpback whale off of Neck Point. This whale was doing lots of feeding as they milled around off the shores of Nanaimo. Strike (KEX0045) was busy filling their belly, an important thing for our humpbacks as they’ve just spent the last 4-6 months using up all their stored energy from last summer.

After watching our lovely whales we stopped to check in on our Steller Sea Lions and Pacific harbour seals at Entrance Island, as well as our brooding cormorants along Gabriola Island. We got an extra special treat, our Peregrine falcons were spotted! These two have once again returned to the Gabriola cliffs and we believe we know where they are nesting now. Hopefully we will soon see baby falcons spreading their wings near the cliffs.

Enjoy the photos of the wildlife taken by Marine Naturalist Janine Van Der Linden.