April 13, 2023 - The T049A's (-A2), T124A's, T124C, and the famous Chainsaw (and his mother)!

It was a little cloudy out when we pushed off of the dock on our Semi-Covered vessel Kula but that didn’t deter us from our quest for whales! There has been lots of whale activity in our area in the past couple of weeks so we were excited to head off for the day’s adventure.
To start off our day, we stopped by False Narrows. False Narrows is a narrow waterway located between Gabriola Island and Mudge Island, and today we had orca passing through it! The T124A’s (including T124A Sabio and her adorable calf T12A4A) and T124C Cooper were travelling and tail slapping away as they headed north. Matriarch T124A Kittiwake and T124C Cooper are actually siblings - they are both the children of T124 Myrtle. Cooper has been travelling with his sister and his nieces/nephews for a while now, including our encounter on April 12, 2023. It’s always great seeing orca family reunions in action! After splashing away in the Narrows, they continued through Northumberland channel, and out into the Strait.
They likely were heading out to meet up with another group that we found afterwards - T063 Chainsaw, his mother T065 Whidbey, and most of the T049A’s (-A1 and A2)! These 7 whales were travelling and splashing around just northeast of Entrance Island. It seems like everyone was in a very energetic mood today. We wouldn’t be surprised if they got together to have a T-party (a big grouping of a bunch of Transient orca pods coming together) after we headed back into home port.
We also had a very special encounter on our way back to Nanaimo - T049A1 Noah, the eldest son of the T049A’s, decided to cruise all the way into the heart of the Nanaimo harbour! Our office manager Val was able to grab some video of him as he glided by the docks - that footage can be seen on our Instagram!

Here’s the full breakdown of all of today’s pods from our 3 orca encounters today:

T049A Nan ♀ (1986)
T049A1 Noah ♂ (2001)
T049A3 Nat ♂ (2011)
T049A4 Neptune ♂ (2014)
T049A5 Nebula ♀ (2017)
T049A6 (2022)

T065 Whidbey II ♀ (<1968)
T063 Chainsaw ♂ (1978)

T124C Cooper ♂ (1992)

T124A Kittiwake ♀ (1984)
T124A4 Sabio ♀ (2010)
T124A4A (2021)
T124A6 Kasuun ♂ (2016)
T124A7 ♀ (2021)

Besides seeing our whales, we also saw a big pile of Steller sea lions and California sea lions on “Stinky Rocks” (the unofficial name for a small group of rocky islands south of Gabriola pass) and a colony of Harbour seals snoozing on the rocks.

All photos were taken by Marine Naturalist Aly Kohlman. We hope you enjoy them!