Today’s journey began with cruising south through Dodd Narrows and further south through Stuart Channel into the Ladysmith Harbour, where there had been a report of orcas and one boat on the scene. Only 35 minutes into the tour, we already had sight of them!

Today’s pod consisted of:

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

When first on the scene, the T101s were very energetic, performing numerous tail slaps, along with one spy hop from their matriarch Reef, likely in celebration of a successful hunt. Orca pods are led by the eldest female, who leads the hunt and shows her children how to hunt efficiently and speak their dialect, as each pod has its unique dialect. Each transient orca needs to eat up to 300 lbs of food every day. In a pod of three adult orcas such as this one, that’s roughly 6 Harbour Seals eaten each day! Though orcas have been shown to feed primarily on harbour seals based on observational research, they also feed on sea lions and harbour porpoises. Attempting to feed on larger sea lions is a primary cause of scarring on the body of an orca, and can help aid in identifying certain orcas that have unique scarring on their dorsal fins.

After their burst of energy started to waver, the T101s made their way out of the harbour. At one point, they were swimming so slowly that they were suspected to be having a short nap! Orcas can sleep by having only half of their brain asleep at one point; unihemispheric sleep occurs when only one-half of their brain is asleep and they alternate which side is asleep so that they can rest while staying conscious to come up for air.

We left the T101s to go and see if there were any Harbour Seals on the haul-outs nearby. Being able to see the seals on the rocks is dependent on the tide, since during the highest tide of the day there is the least amount of rocks for the seals to lay on. Today we found about 20 Harbour Seals in the water on the south end of Hall island. It was high tide so there wasn’t much rock for these animals to shelter on. High tide is also a common time for the seals to be feeding. Their diet consists primarily of herring, flounder, anchovy, codfish and sculpin which they have lots of adaptations to hunt efficiently in the water. They can actually see up to 200m away in clear water thanks to the incredibly thick lenses that they have in their eyes.

As our visit with the Harbour seal came to an end, we started to head back towards Dodd Narrows, where we came across the T101s again. This time they had spread out again, with Reef and Rush together in the centre of Stuart Channel heading north, and Lagoon the youngest son much farther away and close to the shoreline. We continued heading north through Dodd Narrows, leaving the T101s behind us. The Harmac log booms were eventful today, with two Great Blue Herons moving along one near the shore. Sea lions along their usual log boom were quite sleepy, clearly not knowing that three orcas were heading in their direction!

After watching the sea lions and Great Blue Herons, we headed north in Northumberland Channel until we got to the Gabriola Bluffs where we watched the cormorants moving in and out of their cliffside nests. Soon we found ourselves back in the Nanaimo Harbour, happy with all the wildlife that we got to see during the tour! All the photos from this tour were taken by marine naturalist Carmen Murphy and can be viewed below!

June 3, 2023 3:30 - T101s in the Ladysmith Harbour

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