Today we left the harbour in the afternoon as the winds died down. We headed into the Southern Gulf island in search of a pod that was reported travelling north and out through porlier pass earlier in the day. We also left the pass and spread our boats out to see if we could find this pod again. As we searched north we stopped for some wildlife like sea lions and harbour seals, just as our vessel Cascadia was getting close to Nanaimo again they finally spotted some blows in the distance! It was a pod of Orca! Although it didn't turn out to be the pod that we were initially looking for it didn’t matter much to us, it was whales! We quickly IDed them as the T049As (-A1 and A2) using Nan’s distinct dorsal notches. We watched as these whales travelled between entrance island and Gabriola and continued towards snake island.

At nearly the same time that Cascadia found the orca, Keta found a humpback! It was a tough one to ID but referencing photos and others expertise, it was IDed as BCZ0342! They watched this humpback for a little while before joining the watch on the pod of orca.

When the orca got to snake island they spread out and went into hunt mode! Snake island is a common haul-out spot for harbour seals who would be sunning themselves and resting on the rocks. Any not on the rocks this evening were on the menu for this group of 5 whales. Today the pod consisted of:

T049A Nan (1986)
T049A3 Nat (2011)
T049A4 Neptune (2014)
T049A5 Nebula (2017)
T049A5 (2022)

After they finished up their hunt we left them as they quickly started to travel north across the Strait of Georgia towards Sechelt.

Leaving the Orca we saw the blows of Humpbacks nearby so we headed over and found KEY0001 Windy and BCX0054 Vanta travelling together. As we watched them we could also see the backlit blows of about 3 other humpbacks in the distance who will remain unknown.

Soon we returned to the harbour, happy to have been lucky enough to see both species of whale. Please enjoy all the photos taken during the tour by our naturalists Vanessa and Aly.

September 3rd - T049As minus the boys, and two humpbacks!

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