June 24th 10:30 AM - T123s at Dodd Narrows and Prowler Near Nanoose

Some days we find our whales right out of the harbour. Some days we have to travel for a few hours to Victoria or Vancouver. And some days we do loops, looking for our whales, and find them right outside the harbour as we are returning.

That’s exactly what happened during our morning tour today. We had an early charter that left the harbour and began searching for whales. They were joined by our morning tour slightly later, scouring the waters for any signs. Our first boat had begun their trip home when they came upon a pod of orca coming north through Dodd Narrows. Naturalist Cheyenne was very quick to ID this group as the T123s, Sidney, Stanley, Lucky and Darcy. This pod has been around quite a bit lately, cruising through our waters and looking for tasty seals and sea lions. It can be tricky to ID this particular family because the large male, Stanley, has a doppelgänger! His look-alike is T060C Yelnats. Stanley is 22 this year, while Yelnats is only a year younger. These boys both have very tall straight dorsal fins with a notch about 1/4 from the top. When IDing these boys you have to look at small scars on their saddle patch or their eye patches. It can be much easier to ID their other family members to confirm the pod some days.

After confirming it was Sidney and her kids we were able to stay with them a while as they travelled up towards the Harmac pulp mill.

Our second boat this morning managed to find a lone humpback whale northeast of the Ballenas Islands. This little humpback was doing some deep dives and was fluking super low. When whales do this it makes it very difficult to ID our humpbacks. This behaviour is pretty common at this time of year as the whales have very little energy, but we also have some humpbacks who just don’t like showing off their tails. It gave us a place to start when we tried to ID our whale. After looking through the catalogues in the office we were able to ID this whale as Prowler, KEX0047. There isn’t much we know about Prowler at this point. We don’t know their gender, or where they over-winter. Their sightings data on Happy Whale only goes back as far as 2015, and even then they’ve only been reported in the area 9 times. That said, we have spent time with this whale in the past. in 2020 we witnessed Prowler solo bubble-net feeding, a technique of forging that is very new to humpbacks and typically a group feeding behaviour. The following year we saw Prowler once again bubble-net feeding, but this time they were teaching a juvenile whale, Valiant, how to do this interesting feeding behaviour!
Without their tail, Prowler is a very difficult whale to ID. It comes down to small scars on their dorsal and if you’re lucky, a trailing edge from their tail as they roll it on the surface. It is likely Prowler has been seen by many more in the Salish Sea than have been confirmed because of this.

After our time with the whales, we stopped to check on our other local wildlife, including seals and sea lions!

Prowler hanging out in the water. You can see they don’t have a very distinct dorsal fin. Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

A low fluke from prowler. Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

With their interactions with other animals, their environment, and man-made hazards they get covered in scars and scrapes. Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

This shows Prowlers easy to ID shape on the trailing edge of their dorsal! On the right side close to the middle you can see a little nub that we use. Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

Stanley surfacing before Dodd Narrows. Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

Photo by Rebecca Stirling.

Single California Sea Lion still hanging out at Harmac. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Juvenile Bald Eagle in flight. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Mount Baker in all its glory! Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Steller Sea Lions on the buoy near Gabriola Reefs. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Sidney leading the charge! Two of her kids are not far behind. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Lucky surfacing in front of her mom. Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.

Darcy joining the party! Photo by Cheyenne Brewster.