It’s getting into the time of year that we are seeing more humpbacks that are just passing through, instead of our regulars who would be spending their whole summer here. All humpbacks will make a yearly migration from their feeding grounds down south to their breeding and calving grounds.

Each whale has a particular place where they like to spend their time and they return to this same area year after year, this is called Site Fidelity. Humpbacks are known for having high site fidelity, meaning the place they return to is very consistent, and a relatively small range. However some whales seem to be changing this up, as we are seeing adult whales coming and spending their summer here with us in the Salish Sea that hadn’t been recorded before. Our first set of whales from this mornings tour are great examples of both of these things.

We saw Pony (BCX1604) and MMX0355 travelling together. Pony spends most of their summers up off the southern coast of Alaska and seems to take the inside of Vancouver Island as their travel route before crossing the Pacific back to Hawaii, their breeding grounds. While this is our first time as a company seeing Pony, we know from past name designations that Pony has been recorded in the Salish Sea before, both by MERS and HWSS! Today Pony was traveling closely with another new-to-us whale this year MMX0355! This whale has been showing up a lot this year, associating with different individuals and being rather rambunctious. Today was no different, as Pony and MMX0355 were very interesting to watch as they launched themselves out of the water several times, lifted their tails high out of the water, and were slapping their pectoral fins on the water over and over again.

This time of year is not only when we start to see some different humpbacks coming into our range, but also when we see higher frequency of surface behaviour from them! When they first return to their feeding grounds they haven’t eaten for about 5 months, meaning that they are very hungry and since this is their feeding grounds that’s what they do! Once a few months have gone by, the humpbacks have built up more of their fat reserves, and they can focus some of their energy on other things, such as socialization! It’s most of our staff’s favourite time of year to be on the water.

Watching these two was great, but it soon came to the end of our time with them so we left them to their socializing to see what else was potentially nearby. Not too far from these two active whales, we found a whale travelling by himself: Neowise (BCY0160 calf 2020). Neowise is a whale that we have seen consistently since he was born in 2020. Although his tail fluke changed quite a bit during his first winter away from us, we were able to match him to when he was a calf and he hasn’t had much change from that first year. He is known for being a troublemaker in our waters, sometimes getting a little too comfortable and curious with boats. Although these close interactions are very interesting for us, for the whale it can be dangerous. If you approach the wrong boat or one that hasn’t noticed you, you run the risk of getting hurt. A moving boat has a couple of things that it can do to a whale, the first one is the most obvious, it can hit them with the hull. They also have propellers which move the boat forward but can cut a whale if they are on when the whale is next to them, and the last thing is the sound that it produces. Whales are quite sensitive to sound so a running engine can disturb them.

To avoid these hardships occurring to the whales we watch we have very strict regulations for speed and distance and procedures to follow if the whales get too close. With whales we know to get curious, we also use extra caution. Good thing we did with Neowise today, since he did come up to inspect our boat. Not only was he interested in the boat, but he was also just full of beans, he also was pec slapping, slapping his tail on the water, and lifting his tail high when we went for deeper dives. It was quite a sight! Luckily for us, the close interaction and the surface activity happened separately.

Soon after our time with Neowise came to an end we found some other wildlife on the rocky shoreline, including Harbour Seals and Sea Lions!

It was a fantastic trip, with some great photos taken by Vanessa Vereschahen, the onboard naturalist, all of which can be enjoyed below!