It was another beautiful day as we left the harbour looking for whales. As we made our way to the Strait of Georgia we got word that someone had spotted a pod of Orca near Salt Spring island, so we turned back and went through Dodd Narrows to find the whales. We wound through the gulf islands, eventually making it to the west side of Galiano Island, just north of Active pass. The whales were travelling along the shore, and we were quick to ID this pod as the T090s.

Eagle, the matriarch of this pod, was travelling with her kids - Piglet (m, 2006), Tigger (f, 2010), and Kanga (f, 2017). Eagle herself was born in 1980, making this girl 42 years old. She’s fairly close to the age when most female orca go through menopause and stop producing calves, but there is a chance she could still have another calf before she does.

In the morning the pod was hugging the shores of Galiano island as they travelled north. The family would be onto of one another and slowed down, but would spread out and pick up speed periodically.
In the afternoon the pod had made it out of Porlier pass and up towards the Gabriola Reefs. The family seemed to be taking quick naps as they would be stacked on top of each other, surfacing slowly and not moving quickly. Towards the end of our time with them, they seemed to wake up and began playing in the surf near the reefs.
After leaving the whales in the afternoon we travelled up and around Gabriola Island and got a surprise brief encounter with Split Fluke and Prowler. We initially thought Split Fluke was travelling with a calf, as the second whale was quite small, but it turned out to be Prowler, a known adult humpback in our region who is just a very small whale. Prowler has never been a fan of lifting their tail when they dive which makes ID’ing them very difficult as they have a very nondescript dorsal fin as well.

Enjoy the photos taken on the tours by marine naturalists Rebeka Pirker, Carmen Murphy, and Cheyenne Brewster

August 3rd - The T090s and Split Fluke and Prowler

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