It was a beautiful sunny day when our vessels left the dock on July 8th. We had an early report of Orca seen from shore not too far from the Nanaimo Harbour, in fact, it was only about 15 minutes away! After the short travel south through Northumberland Channel and Dodd Narrows we came across 5 black dorsal fins cutting the smooth waters off of Cedar. It was a family that we have been seeing a fair bit lately and one of the company favourites - the T049As! Today the two oldest sons weren’t travelling with the rest of the family, so the members who were there were:

T049A Nan ♀ (1986)
T049A3 Nat ♂ (2011)
T049A4 Neptune ♂ (2014)
T049A5 Nebula ♀ (2017)
T049A6 Charlie II (2022)

Today this family was on a mission, travelling north back through Dodd and continuing up past Nanaimo and out into the Strait of Georgia. When we were with them, they started down around the Yellow-point area of Cedar and our boats left them just before they entered Dodd. After spending time with the T049As, we headed to find some other wildlife! We headed East, travelling towards DeCourcy Island when suddenly, an orca started flying out of the water! At first, we thought this might have been Noah who was straggling behind the rest of the family, but soon we realized this was:

T065A5 Indy ♂ (2014)

Indy has been off from the rest of his family for some time now since he was only 5 years old! This is pretty uncommon for orca, since male orca will usually live with their mom until she eventually passes away. Indy though seems to be having a great time away from his family, getting up to all sorts of adventures. Typically when we see this young whale, he is alone and he is breaching. Even when spotted with other pods, he seems to instigate all sorts of surface activity from them, with things like tail slaps, full breaches, and cartwheeling being common sights when he is around. No one really knows why this little whale always seems to be up to no good, but it’s pretty fun to watch! Sometimes his curiosity can get the best of him though, since another activity he seems to enjoy is playing with Crab and Prawn Traps. These traps with their long lines can be dangerous for a whale as they can easily get the rope wrapped around their tail or pectoral fins, or even stuck in their mouth. Indy, unfortunately, fell victim to entanglement with one of the crab traps he had targeted, but luckily was able to shake it off and was left unharmed. Today he was carrying on like normal, and we eventually had to leave him behind and continue with other wildlife.

We headed to Stinky Rocks where we got to see little harbour seals hauled out on the shallower sloped rocks. The harbour seals rely on these smaller islands since they can’t move very well on land. When they move they can’t walk, they instead do the worm across the rocks in a motion known as galumphing.

The Sea Lions on the other side of the rocks in the steeper area were also very assuming today, as they yelled at each other and once again showed us that they don’t care about personal space!

We also made a final stop at the Gabriola Bluffs, where we got to see the cormorants on their nests and some turkey vultures hanging out!

This was an amazing trip filled with so many unique experiences with all the wildlife. Our onboard naturalists Carmen Murphy and Aly Kohlman got some amazing photos from the day which can be viewed below!

July 8, 2023, 10:30 - The T049As and the lone explorer T065A5 Indy

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