It was another beautiful sunny day as our boats left on June 25th. We headed out into the Strait of Georgia to start our search for the day. Without any sightings to start the day we rely on our own intuition, sighting skills, and a little bit of luck! Since we have two boats, it doubles the area we can search, so they fanned out and started looking. It’s not only us out there either, all the companies in the area work together to share their sightings, which helps to increase everyone’s success. The ocean is a big place, so the larger the sighting network is, the more likely it is to spot something. As was the case today, partway into our search we got word of a humpback whale who was travelling at an area called Halibut Bank.

This area is usually a hotspot for wildlife since banks provide extra nutrients and oxygen exchange. When we are watching humpback whales what we look for to figure out who it is we are looking at is sometimes the dorsal fin, but more useful is the bottom of the tail flukes. These huge tails have unique markings, scars, nicks, and other identifying features that we use to identify the humpback. Dorsals can also be used, but most humpback dorsals basically look the same, so the tail is much better.

It didn't take us much time with this whale before we knew who we had, it was BCY0893 Windy! Windy is one of those whales that we can ID by dorsals thanks to the unique white colouration on their tips, as well as the fact he sports a scar from a satellite tag that was once used on him. Windy is also special because he is a confirmed male. Most of the time, we only know females for sure when they show up with a calf. Another way is if you get lucky enough to get a photo of the genital area of the whale since males won’t have a hemispherical lobe that the females do. Photos have been used to confirm Windy’s gender, but he was also biopsied by Oregon state which confirmed with genetics that Windy is indeed a he.

Partway into our time with Windy we heard about another sighting in the area for two bull orca that were travelling together nearby, so we left Windy behind and headed over to the other whales.

These two males turned out to be:

T087 Harbeson ♂ (~1962) and T124C Cooper ♂ (1992)!

Male orca are a spectacular sight to behold because of the sexual dimorphism that exists. This means that the males and females of the species look very different than each other. In this case, the males get much larger and have proportionally larger fins. The most obvious of these is the 6-foot-tall dorsal fin that adult males have, but their pectoral fins and tail flukes are also larger than the females. The male’s tails actually get so large that they start to bend down on themselves forming almost hooks along the edge. Most of the time when we see orca though, the only fin that will be visible to us is the dorsal fin, since as the name implies, it’s on their back! If you’re lucky enough to see more surface activity the other fins sizes then become obvious.

Cooper and Harbeson were travelling south today down the Strait of Georgia then along the mouth of Howe Sound. We soon also had to leave the towering dorsals of Cooper and Harbeson, and we started the journey back to Nanaimo. We made a stop along the way at the White Islets, where we saw Seals, Sea Lions, and some sea birds hanging out on the rocks.

All of the photos from the day were taken by Aly Kohlman and Vanessa Vereschahen.