On the afternoon of July 13th, we had one boat return to search the Strait of Georgia for some whales! They headed up north towards the Ballenas Islands where there was a report from earlier in the day. We were scanning the horizon when in the distance we saw it, a blow! We headed over and soon saw a familiar dorsal fin, it was a humpback whale: Chi (Zephyrs 2021 calf). This youngster is getting a reputation amongst the whales as being extra curious. They seem to like to blow bubbles at the boats! Today was one of these days as the whale blew bubbles up from under us. It can be risky behaviour for a whale to have since boats can be very dangerous. Whale-watching boats usually know the whale behaviour more than the average boater, so when they start to exhibit curious behaviour or change direction to face the boat, we react! The reaction is quite easy, we just have to shut our engines off and float. When a whale approaches like this that’s the best way to keep everyone safe. The propellers if they were moving could harm the whale, and if the whale felt threatened they might react in a big way which could then hurt the vessel. Luckily, this doesn’t happen and instead, we got to watch in awe as Chi blew his bubbles and stirred up the water around us.

After a little while Chi got bored of us, and started to swim away, but not before he got one last look at us! Behind the boat, he did a big spy hop! This is when the whale’s head comes straight out of the water, lifting its eye above the surface to get a look around them.

After this display, we slowly made our way away from Chi and towards some blows in the distance. These blows quickly turned into splashes and we saw a young whale who was having a grand old time! We got to see Europa and an unknown adult do one close surface and dive, making this rambunctious young whale Europa’s 2023 calf! Calves tend to be a little bit more active at the surface since they aren’t having to do their own hunting yet, and instead, get to rely on their mother’s milk for the first 6 months of their lives. This means that they also had mom’s milk to sustain them during the migration and aren’t here only to eat like their mom. It’s our theory as to why mother humpbacks seem to leave their calves at the surface when they are feeling active, letting the boat babysit the calf while they get to do deeper feeding dives. Europa and the other unknown were surfacing together many hundreds of meters away from us and the calf, doing very long dives. The young whale wouldn’t be able to keep up with these longer dives yet, since it is so small it doesn’t have the lung capacity to get very deep.

We didn’t mind keeping an eye on this little one though, as it was very entertaining to watch it continuously cartwheel through the water! At one point we even got a shot of the underside of this young whale. Without the presence of the hemispherical lobe, we think this young whale is likely male, although not confident in our humpback sexing ability!

Soon our time ran out with Europa’s calf so we slowly started to make our way back to Nanaimo.

It was an amazing day filled with so much excitement we couldn’t be happier! We had three cameras onboard today thanks to some eager naturalists, so the photos taken by Aly Kohlman, Vanessa Vereschahen, and Val Watson can be viewed below!

July 13, 2023, 3:30 - Curious Chi and Europa's very playful calf

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