It was a beautiful sunny morning as we departed the harbour on our 10:30 tour looking for whales. We had heard of reports of a humpback off the ferry route near Entrance Island so that’s where we started our search. After scanning the waters with no luck we headed further into the Strait of Georgia. As we got near Halibut Bank we saw a blow! 2 humpbacks were diving near the banks, basically a hill under the water. When the tides move in and out of the strait of Georgia they will hit this underwater hill causing an upwelling of nutrient-rich waters. When these waters reach the surface they provide food for plankton which is the base of the food chain, causing a high productivity area. The humpbacks take advantage of areas like this and can be found feeding in the waters around Halibut Bank quite often.

One of our senior naturalists, Cheyenne Brewster, was quick to ID these 2 humpbacks as Orion and Split Fluke. We had seen Orion just the night before outside Porlier Pass. Overnight it appears that he made about a 60 km trip to get up to Halibut Bank! Orion was with Split Fluke, a whale we actually know quite a bit about! Split Fluke was born in 2006 to mother Heather. She has had 3 calves that she has brought back to the Salish Sea, Valiant in 2017, Halfpipe in 2019 and another calf in 2021.

We spotted Split Fluke right outside the harbour a few nights ago with a different whale, Prowler. Split Fluke tends to prefer travelling with other whales as we rarely see her solo in the Salish Sea. This morning these two were travelling quickly northwest. After leaving them we went to the yellow ODAS buoy that marks Halibut Bank which had some steller sea lions on it! We also saw seals near Entrance Island on the way home and plenty of seabirds along the way!

Please enjoy the photos taken by our Naturalists Cheyenne and Aly from the morning trip.

August 9th 10:30 AM - Orion and Split Fluke

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