It was a beautiful day as we had all three of our vessels heading out of the Nanaimo Harbour in search of some whales for the day. We had a ton of luck this morning, getting to see 10 different orca and 6 different humpbacks across the three vessels.

The first group that was found was the T037As travelling with a couple of extra whales in the mix. Typically the T037As is a group of 4 whales, the Matriarch Volker (T037A) travelling with three of her four known kids. Today they were joined by troublemaker Indy (T065A5) and another male Neftali (T077C)! This makes the whales present the following:

These 6 whales were having a great time travelling and socializing together, with some of the younger whales playing with each other and slapping the water with their tails! This continued on as we watched them. It seemed like Indy was playing with the two youngest of the T037As, Spinnaker and Crinkle, while Inky, the oldest son, was spending more of his time with Neftali. Orca are very social creatures, so having new friends to play with is probably as exciting for them (if not more) as it is for young humans! Even the matriarchs seem to enjoy seeing each other when full pods come together for socialization. Did you know that the section of the brain for social interactions is actually larger in orca than it is in humans (proportionally)? This likely means that there are aspects to their social structure that we might not even understand! It’ll be interesting to see how researchers develop this idea as time goes on.

After spending time with these orca, we ended up finding a trio of humpbacks spending time together in the Strait of Georgia. Thanks to them doing high fluking dives while we were there it was very easy to ID them. It was Geometry (BCZ0338), Niagara (BCY0057), and Split Fluke (BCX1068) travelling together! These are three adult whales who have been recorded in our waters since 2015, 2000, and 2006 respectively. We know the ages of both Niagara and Split Fluke since they were seen travelling with their mothers here as calves, but Geometry was first recorded as an adult from what we know. No matter their exact age, we know seeing three fully grown (or close to) humpback whales travelling in such tight quarters is always a thrill! One 17m long whale is interesting enough so having three is even better! They were travelling and doing what were likely feeding dives, since they would surface sporadically, without much sense of direction.

After spending some quality time with them, we continued on until another set of blows caught our eye. It was a pair of humpbacks this time, IDed as Dalmatian (BCY0994) and Valiant (BCX1773)! Interestingly, these two whales are related, since Dalmatian is Valiant’s Aunt! We still don’t know if the humpbacks realize these family relationships or if it happens to be a coincidence due to their site fidelity in the feeding grounds, but we always take note of cases such as this to see if there’s a significant interaction.

While two of the boats spent time with Dalmatian and Valiant, the other one got their own special humpback interaction with Two Spot (BCZ0432)! Two Spot was travelling solo Just north of Gabriola Island and was also seeming to be feeding while doing long dives in the Strait. The good thing about long feeding dives with our humpbacks is that it usually corresponds to lifting that tail high out of the air, making IDing them just a little bit easier!

Now this already seems like a lot of whales to come across during a trip, but there was one more surprise in store for our guests and staff today, the T018s! This iconic pod was travelling together not too far from the Nanaimo Harbour, just south of Entrance Island. This group consists of the following members:

T018 Esperanza ♀ (≤1955)
T019 Nootka ♀ (≤1965)
T019B Galiano ♂ (1995)
T019C Spouter ♂ (2001)

They are well known in the Salish Sea, not just because of the humongous 6-foot dorsal fins of the two boys, but also because at 68 years old, Esperanza is believed to be the oldest orca in the Bigg’s/Transient population! She and her daughter Nootka have seen a lot during their lifetime and have experience that is super helpful to their pod. Both of the females in this group are thought to be post-reproductive or have gone through menopause already, so there will be no new members to this pod anymore. Don’t fret though, it’s highly likely that they had more calves when they were younger and have a bigger family than we know since they were in prime calving age before much research and tracking was being done on the Bigg’s/Transient orca. We are also pretty confident that the family genes are being passed on from Galiano and Spouter since they are such large, impressive boys, but again, without genetic analysis, the fathers in the population don’t get tracked.

We eventually ended up leaving this pod as well and continued back to the harbour. It isn’t often that we get to see this many groups of whales during one of our tours so we felt very lucky as we tied up the vessels. The onboard Marine Naturalists Ella Hillbrecht, Aly Kohlman, and Vanessa Vereschahen captured some amazing photos from the day which can be viewed below.

August 21, 2023, 3:30 - Whales, Whales, Whales

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