Today was a great day since we already had sightings when we were leaving the Harbour. There was a humpback north of Gabriola Island, not too far from home! Two of our boats headed that way, while the third headed out to the Strait of Georgia to see if there was anything else around.

The two boats arrived on the scene with the humpback north of Entrance. This whale was being a little bit rambunctious, doing some surface activity and then moving in to check out the boats. didn’t take long to get a look at the underside of this whales tail flukes and ID them as Zephyr’s 2021 calf (BCZ0414 calf 2021). This young whale seems to be interested in boats, which is a dangerous hobby to have as a humpback. Although whale-watching boats know how to behave when things like this happen the average boater might not. It’s important to know if a whale approaches a vessel the safest thing to do for the whale and for yourself is to shut down your engine and wait it out. Once the whales’ curiosity is settled it will move on and it’s important to remember, touching the whales during close encounters is not only illegal but it’s bad for the whale as it can spread bacteria and parasites.

Today we got to enjoy our time shut down until Zephyrs calf decided it was done with us. During these close interactions, you can get really good looks at the fine details of the whale, especially with the added zoom of the telephoto lens!

We got some photos of the tubercles on Zephyrs 2021 calf’s rostrum which are little skin growths around sensitive hairs. These hairs are thought to help them detect their prey in the water through vibration. If you look closer at the cropped image you’ll be able to spot the hairs themselves!

You will also notice the little orange crab-looking animals that are all over this whale. These are whale lice! Whale lice are very interesting since they are a common parasite on whales, but they can’t swim so lice are only transferred through contact. This can lead to interesting research being done into whale population interactions. You don’t need to get any DNA from the whales themselves, but rather capture a louse and use that for research into the populations. Here’s an article that goes into more detail about this research: The Stories Whale Lice Tell.

While this was happening, our other boat found another young humpback: Graze’s 2019 calf (BCY0523 calf 2019). This whale has been a relatively common sight for us this year with frequent sightings of it happening out in the Strait of Georgia. Today they weren’t up to much, just doing feeding dives so our boat didn’t spend much time with them before heading over to see Zephyrs 2021 calf.

After our time with the whales was over we also got to see some Harbour Seals, Sea Lions, and lots of birds before we ended our day back in the Nanaimo Harbour.

All the photos from the day were taken by the onboard naturalists Carmen Murphy, Ella Hillbrecht, and Vanessa Vereschahen.