Every day on the Salish Sea is a new adventure. Today we found ourselves heading for Parksville in search of whales. Parksville has been a hotbed of humpback activity for us this year, so it wasn’t too surprising when we spotted a few blows! These whales seemed to be napping as we made our approach, and after about 15 minutes they seemed to wake from their slumber and began doing some big dives. We were able to ID this pair as female humpback Bullet and juvenile Scuba.

Bullet has returned to the Salish Sea every year since her first sighting in 2015. She was confirmed a female when she returned last year with a calf.
Bullet has a distinct notch in her fluke that looks like a small bullet hole, earning her nickname.

Scuba was born in 2019 to mother Trinity/ZigZag and has returned to our waters since. He has a small black mark on the right side of his fluke that looks like a scuba diver.

These 2 were very curious about the boats. When they would return from a deep dive they would surface fairly close, so our boats remained still with their engines off for the majority of this trip to reduce the risk of startling or injuring the whales.
When they would surface they would be pointed at the boats, seeming to watch us carefully while resting. They would inhale deeply and dive, throwing their tails high into the air and slipping beneath the boats before vanishing into the dark. They must have been feeding fairly close because they didn’t seem eager to leave our area until we were getting ready to leave ourselves. On one of the last surfaces Scuba dove under the boat, surfacing on the other side and rolling over to lift their large pec fin and gave a wave before the pair dove and swam off towards Lasqueti Island.

On our way back to the docks one of our vessels spotted 2 other whales outside the harbour. We only managed to get one look at them before heading back to get our afternoon tour, but it was enough of a look for our naturalists on board to ID them as Valiant and Stella.

Our afternoon boats departed the harbour and were quick to find Stella and Valiant not far from where we had left them. These 2 were zig-zagging around and feeding on schools of fish using the common lunge feeding technique.
Valiant is a young whale we have been watching for several years. They were born to Split Fluke in 2017 and have returned to our seas consistently for the last 5 years. Valiant has deep white scar marks on their tail from fighting orca as a calf. We think this has led to them holding a bit of a grudge as earlier this year they were spotted in the San Juan Islands chasing pods of Orca. Usually, it’s the other way around, but Valiant seems eager to turn the tides.
Stella is a whale that we don’t see very often, in fact, none of our current staff can recall ever seeing them before. They were fairly easy to ID given their striking black tail with a unique trailing edge.

Photos by Marine Naturalists Rebeka Pirker, Carmen Murphy, and Vanessa Vereschahen.

July 16th - Bullet and Scuba + Valiant and Stella

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