We were excited to see what the day would hold as our vessel left the dock on May 24th. Although we didn’t have any reports to start the day, we felt confident that we would be able to find something out there. We started by heading south through Northumberland Channel, into Dodd Narrows, and then exploring the Southern Gulf Islands. We stopped at a Sea Lion Haul out that we lovingly call “Stinky Rock” thanks to the bad breath and bathroom habits of the sea lions lounging on the rocks. While we were enjoying watching them fighting, napping, and having no regard for each other’s personal space, we got a call from another boat. There were humpbacks spotted in Howe Sound!

We started the journey across the Strait of Georgia towards the sighting, and it didn’t take long before we saw the sign of the humpback whales! There were two in the area, but each was travelling alone. The first whale that we saw we recognized right away, but in a way that wasn’t that helpful. It was the Mystery Humpback that was travelling North near the white islets during one of our tours a couple of days before. It has a distinct scar on the dorsal fin which makes it easy to remember, but so far we haven’t been able to match it to any of the known humpbacks in the area. We will keep trying though! Sometimes when you have a dorsal for a whale you can’t ID, they will fluke and we can match that and note the changes to the dorsal, but we weren't so lucky with the tails today and were left with only dorsal fins for this whale.

After spending some time with our Mystery Whale, we decided to check out the other single humpback that was travelling nearby. This humpback was also only showing us its dorsal fin, but also its face as it lunged out of the water! We later used our photos to determine this whale was BCY0995 Smiley! She is a known female since she has been seen multiple times travelling with her calves. We know of at least a calf in 2017, and one in 2022! Today she must have been trying to build up her fat reserves again as we saw her lunge feeding at the surface multiple times.

Two photo shows the amazing extension that happens when our baleen whales feed. They have Ventral Grooves in their throat skin, which have extra skin that expands out when they are taking in the water with their food. Each mouthful of these humpback whales is about 20,000 L or the equivalent of filling up an average bathtub 300 times! Not all of this mouthful is food though, it’s mostly water that will contain small schooling fish and krill that the humpbacks are after. once they get the gigantic mouthful the water gets pushed out of their mouth through their baleen plates. Those plates act as a sieve which captures the small food, and then they scrape them off the baleen with their tongue and eat it!

Humpbacks’ main goal while in our waters is to each as much as possible, since when they migrate they won’t have access to as much food and primarily rely on their fat stores for energy. Lunge feeding in this manner is very exciting to see, and you have to have great reflexes to capture it on camera as it’s usually the first surface after a dive. Luckily, our onboard naturalist Carmen Murphy was on the ball and managed to capture some really amazing moments from the tour! Not only of the whales but of the other wildlife we saw along the way as well. Please enjoy all the photos below!

May 24, 2023 - Smiley Lunge feeding and a Mystery Whale in Howe Sound

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