April 21, 2023 - Favourites Day! Chainsaw, Harbeson, The Alaskan Boys (T125A and T128), and the T137's in one tour!

Today we had two different trips out, at two different times! We had an early Charter which left around 9 am and our regular tour which departed at noon. Today we were lucky enough to have an early report to match our departure, so we headed south to where people had been spotting them from shore.

Once arriving on scene it was obvious who we were looking at: it was the Alaskan Brothers travelling with the T137As! This group is easy to ID since there are three large males present: T125A, T128, and T137A! All of these males have very distinct notches out of their dorsal fins which makes for easy identification. Even the females of the group have some distinct notches, as you can see from the photos below.

Seeing the T137s in particular was interesting today, since one of their members, T137D Wright hadn’t been seen with the rest of her pod the last few times they were seen. We focused on trying to see if she was present today, and it didn’t take long before spotting her travelling beside her favourite Brother Jack. Many people’s hearts were put at ease with the photos from this trip!

We continued travelling north with these whales through Stuart Channel until they eventually stopped for a snack! The hunt started with throwing the huge sea lion out of the water, the staff and guests watched in awe as the sea lion soared through the air, but unfortunately, there is no photographic evidence of this so you’ll have to take our word for it!

Soon the first boat had to leave, and our public tour was now off the dock and heading in that direction! They got to watch as the Alaskan boys and the T137s continued their hunt, with lots more surface activity as they did so!

One of the most common questions that we get asked on the tours is: Why do the whales jump, and how often do they do it? The answer is that we don’t really know! In this case, while they are hunting larger prey like a sea lion, we see much more surface activity as they try and stun and kill their more dangerous prey. It’s not very common to see hunting orca though, so we enjoyed every second of the time watching these orca showcase their explosive power and teamwork.

While watching our first group, we got word that a few iconic orca of the Salish Sea were spotted nearby, so we decided to head that way and catch up with them! This group was doing more typical orca behaviour, travelling slowly south through the Strait of Georgia. Even though they didn’t have much surface activity, getting to see Chainsaw and Harberson was an awe inspiring sight!

You might recognize Chainsaw’s dorsal fin from our very own logo, since his story of perseverance and strength inspires us here at Vancouver Island Whale Watch.

In total all the whales that we saw today were:

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

T087 Harbeson ♂ (~1962)

T128 Flotsam ♂ (1988)
T125A Jetsam ♂ (1998)

T137 Loon ♀ (~1984)
T137A Jack ♂ (2002)
T137B Tempest ♀ (2006)
T137D Wright ♀ (2012)

We returned to the harbour today in awe of all of the wildlife we got to see and were once again thankful to get to call this place home!

Todays photos were taken by onboard Naturalists Val Watson and Desarae (Des) Poier.