September 11th - T035A's & T038A's by Lantzville and a trio of Humpbacks at Hudson Rocks

While we managed to avoid having much of a fire season here on the island some places on the west coast were not as lucky and we had a bit of the smoke blow over to the island on the 11th. Thankfully the smoke did not keep the whales away, in fact all our whales were right outside Nanaimo today!

We started the day with the T038As and T035s. We don’t often encounter either of these pods, so it was a nice treat to see them in our neighborhood. The last time we saw these whales was September 28th, 2019!
The family dynamics of this pod are something else! They are a bit messy and hard to follow, but below are the numbers of our whales who were with us today.

T035A’s
T035A Lester (1998)
T035A1 Opal (2010)
T035A2 (2013)
T035A3 (2018)

T038A’s
T038A Dana (1998)
T038A2 (2020)

Now typically the T035A’s travel with Lester’s mom, T035 Ruby Roo. Ruby Roo has another daughter, T038 Graeme, who is Dana’s mother, and typically travels with her other 4 kids.
It seems that Dana has left her mom’s side to spend some time with her aunt Lester and cousins Opal, T035A2 and T035A3. We’ve had a few orca decide to leave their moms side this year in favor of travelling with other family members. Sabio left her mom to travel with her sister Elkugu for a while. Jude and Noah were seen traveling with their aunt Van for a bit as well. Being highly social animals it’s not unusual for them to break off and travel with other family or even unrelated pods for a time.

The T035 matriline is a bit of a unique pod as 2 members bare striking white birth marks near their dorsal. Dana has a large white splotch on the left side of her dorsal, while her younger sibling Borrowman bares a similar spot on the right side of their dorsal. This mark makes it pretty easy to ID this group of whales.
These guys were traveling fast, moving from North of Long beach/ east of Lantzville area to Neck point in a little under an hour. They were taking us right back home!

As we got ready to depart our whales and head off to see some other wildlife we were fortunate to spot some humpback blows near the Hudson Rock ecological reserve. We found 3 humpbacks doing some traveling and foraging around the reserve, which sits just outside Nanaimo on the east side of Newcastle and Protection islands. The three whales we found were ID’d as Fader, Poptart, and Mathematician.

Fader is a whale we sight every year in our waters and was confirmed to be a male sometime in the last year. Fader will be making their way to Hawaii in the coming weeks and at this time of year he’s likely started to practice his song. Male humpbacks will sing a song during the breeding season to establish vocal territories, and they begin practicing this song towards the end of the feeding season.

This 10-20 minute long song is sung on repeat in the breeding ground for up to 24hrs at a time, but during the fall in our waters they just practice as they start to pair up and try to escort the ladies south. One of the most fascinating aspects of this song is that it is ever-changing. Every year several notes up to entire phrases of the song change and somehow all the males in the region pick up on those changes seemingly simultaneously.
Biologists are still unsure of how this song changes and who decides on them, but right now it appears the changes are picked up during the feeding season. During the summers whales from multiple breeding grounds head to the same feeding grounds, and this can result in males picking up sounds from other males in other breeding grounds and influencing the song for the coming breeding season.
Still so much is unknown about these gentle giants and how they communicate!

Travelling with Fader was little 6 year old Poptart, Big Mama’s 2016 calf! Poptart is putting their moms teaching to use, returning to the Salish Sea every summer to feed in the same foraging grounds Big Mama showed them all those years ago. We’ve encountered Poptart a hand full of times this year, and if we are lucky we will get to see them a few more times before they make their way to Hawaii.
Mathematician was the third whale present, a whale we see almost every year as well, and has been seen in the Salish Sea since at least 2010.

All 3 of our humpbacks are Hawaii whales, but spend their summers in vastly different places within the Salish Sea. Poptart spends more time at the north end of the island where Big Mama showed them the feeding grounds in 2016. Mathematician seems to spend the majority of their time in the south, near Sooke, but occasionally travels up to Big Mama’s neighborhood in Campbell River area, and has even been seen up in Alaska! Fader is a busy body, spending time all over the place! From Campbell River, to our neck of the woods, and spending quite a bit of time over the years on the west side of the island near Tofino and Ucluelet.

Enjoy the photos of our whales taken by marine naturalists Aly Kohlman and Vanessa Vereschahen.

Dana (T038A). Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Left to right: Dana (T038A) and Lester (T035A). Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Left to right: Lester (T035A) and T035A3. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Left to right: Dana (T038A) and T035A3. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

T035A Lester followed by T038A2 and T035A3 Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Left to right: T035A2, Dana (T038A), and T035A3. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Left to right: Lester (T035A) and Opal (T035A1, front) and T035A2 (back). Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Left to right: Opal (T035A1) and T035A2. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Opal (T035A1) surfacing in front of Dana (T038A). Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Left to right: Opal (T035A1), Dana (T038A), and one of the youngsters. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Lester (T035A) followed by T038A2 and another family member . Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Mathematician (BCY0785). Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Poptart (BCY1014). Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Fader (BCY0195). Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.

Jilann LechnerSeptember 18, 2022Comment