Today was the day of technical difficulties, as both cameras got little to no evidence of the whales that were present during this tour, luckily the whales that we saw are very distinct and we were able to ID them with just our eyeballs while we were spending time with them! So you’ll just have to trust us on it this time.

Starting the tour, the boats headed out into the Strait of Georgia this afternoon to see what sort of wildlife would be found there and it didn’t take long before we spotted some blows in the distance! It was two separate groups of whales, one was a mom and calf pair: Zig Zag (BCX1193), her 2023 calf, and the other was a trio of humpbacks travelling together: Geometry (BCZ0338), Split Fluke (BCX1068), Divot (BCX1057). Each boat took their own set of whales, and got to watch them for a hour!

This time restriction while watching them is to help minimize our impact on the animals, as spending too long may lead to more boats being present and therefore causing more disturbance to the whales. Today that wasn’t as much of an issue though, as we had these whales all to ourselves!

Getting to see all of these adult whales travelling together was pretty cool, since each of them are about 17 meters long, and weigh close to 3o tons each. If we were to stack each of these humpbacks tail to rostrum, they would be the same height as the Leaning Tower of Pisa! And that’s just Geometry, Split Fluke, and Divot. Not only is the sheer size of these animals breathtaking, but each time we saw Geometry come to the surface he made a spectacle of it, swimming sideways, crashing his 5 meter long pectoral fin onto the surface of the water with a loud clap!

The others weren’t as showy while we were with them, but they were still interesting to watch since they were doing longer dives, meaning they were lifting their tails high into the air as they prepared to go beneath the surface. This is particially what made it so easy to ID them without a Camera working on scene! We got to watch them moving in and out of the water with Geometry slapping at the surface each time before we eventually came to the end of our time with them.

We did see some harbour seals and Steller Sea Lions not too far from the whales, spending their time hanging out on Stinky Rocks, this time we did manage some photos of them which you can see below!

After leaving the pinnipeds, we returned under the sunset to Nanaimo. What a great day!

Photos by Marine Naturalist Aly Kohlman.