For the afternoon tour, we headed out to search the Strait of Georgia, looking for the T018s that were seen in the morning. It can be very hard to find the orca again when they’re left in the strait since it’s a huge area to cover, and a slight change in travel angle can result in miles and miles of difference from where you expect them to be. This was one such day as we didn’t manage to find the orca again - lucky for us there was a sighting of humpbacks not too far from where we were looking so we headed in that direction! When we first got there it was travelling near Halibut Bank, a high-productivity area that often has humpbacks and porpoises hanging out near it. Watching this whale travelling was great but not too soon after we got there it had a change in behaviour. As we were travelling parallel to the animal so as to not disturb it, it suddenly made a sharp turn and started heading right towards us! With no time to avoid it, all we could do was turn our engines off and wait to see what it would do.

It ended up coming right up to our boats and held us captive, circling the boats, spraying our guests with snot, and seemed to be rubbing its back on our vessels. This behaviour is known as mugging! It’s pretty rare, but it seems to be a learned behaviour. Only certain whales who are more curious do it, and it’s something we try not to encourage from the animals. Since regulations state we can’t start our engines within 100m of a humpback whale we were left floating as this whale took turns rubbing against each of our vessels. Eventually, the whale showed us the bottom side of its tail fluke and we managed to snap a photo.

Searching for hours and hours after the tours we couldn't find a match until we learned this whale wasn’t in any catalogues yet. We soon learned it had been named Eros by MERS as they knew it as a mugger from a news article released in mid-August.

So this must have been one of the more curious ones in the area. Its fluke is quite lovely, being nearly all black other than target-shaped marks left over it from barnacle attachment in the past.

Eventually, Eros left us alone and went back to travelling and feeding in the nutrient-rich waters. We took this opportunity and left it behind, heading off to the ODAS buoy that had a couple of stellar sea lions hauled out on it. When watching these animals another whale-watching vessel found a pod of transient orca! We headed over to watch the T069s travelling very close to home, right along the Gabriola Island shoreline. These whales were just travelling with the sunset lighting their blows from the back.

We are very lucky to have had both species of whale during this trip, and such an amazing encounter with our humpback Eros. The onboard naturalists Janine and Vanessa captured many amazing photos from the tour which you can view below!

September 5th 3:30 PM - A new Humpback whale: Eros!

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