May 7, 2023 - T-party off of Parksville

The day began with a trip North toward Parksville. There were reports from land that placed orca between the Ballenas Islands and Mistaken Island. Our open boat Keta headed up the coast, searching for almost an hour for these whales before finding them, and it was worth it. We found a slow-travelling T-party with at least 14 whales present. They were located very close to the shore, and many people were able to enjoy viewing the T-party along the beach in Parksville on this day.

It seems like today’s party had a couple of “mini parties“ going on - T063 Chainsaw, T065 Whidbey II, and the T065B’s had a little party going on and the T036A’s, T087 Harbeson, and T124C Cooper were in a second separate group.

Today’s party members were:

T036A Leland ♀ (1990)
T036A1 Tierna ♀ (2005)
T036A1A (2022)
T036A2 Kailas ♀ (2012)
T036A3 Storm/Mike III ♂ (2015)
T036A5 ♂ (2021)

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

T065B Chunk ♀ (1993)
T065B1 Birdsall ♂ (2011)
T065B2 Nettle ♂ (2019)
T065B3 (2023)

T087 Harbeson ♂ (~1962)

T124C Cooper ♂ (1992)

If you are familiar with who Chainsaw is, you likely know that he is one of our favourite orca! He can be seen on our logo and much of our merchandise. If you have visited our waterfront office, you may have even seen a photo of him breaching up on the wall!

There were three generations of orca present during this T-party. Chainsaw’s mother is thought to be T065 “Whidbey II”, who is proven to be the mother of T065B “Chunk”. Chunk has three calves, T065B1 “Birdsall”, T065B2 “Nettle”, and T065B3, a calf born earlier this year. This means Whidbey II was visiting her grandchildren!

T087 Harbeson and T124C Cooper are two solo whales that enjoy travelling between pods to mingle with many different whales, and they were among the T-party today as well.

There were two other pods that appeared briefly at the start of our trip, but they disappeared before we were able to get photos of them! These pods were the T090’s and T101’s:

T090 Eagle ♀ (1980)
T090B Piglet ♂ (2006)
T090C Tigger ♀ (2010)
T090D Kanga ♀ (2017)

T101 Reef ♀ (≤1969)
T101A Rush ♂ (1993)
T101B Lagoon ♂ (1997)

After leaving our T-party, we encountered one more orca before we had to continue on. That was T049A1 Noah ♂ (2001), a male orca who has taken to living the bachelor lifestyle in the past couple of years.

After leaving Noah, our Zodiac Keta headed to Harmac to see the sea lions. Today there were many California sea lions up on the log booms. As usual, they were very energetic, arguing and fighting and making their barking calls.

Today’s photos were taken by Marine Naturalist Aly Kohlman.

Left to right: T065A1 Birdsall, T065A3 Nettle, and T065B Chunk.

T065B Chunk, T065B1 Birdsall with their youngest pod member in the front - T065B3!

Jilann LechnerMay 7, 2023WhalesComment