Before we even boarded our boats we were greeted by our first wildlife sighting of the day! Petra, our local female Belted Kingfisher, was chatting away atop a pole nearby. She was busy scanning the waters looking for lunch when we saw her. We always love it when we get to see wildlife before we even start the main part of our adventure!

Once we got on our boats we headed out into the Strait of Georgia to begin our search for whales. We didn’t need to go far from our home port before we spotted our first whales of the day - a pair of humpbacks was travelling near Entrance Island. This duo was identified as Professor X (BCX1965) and Iota (BCX1416 calf 2022). These two demonstrated a fascinating (and uncommon for our area) feeding technique called bubble netting today!
Bubble netting is a feeding technique that requires at least two whales to work in cooperation. One whale will dive down and begin circling a ball of prey, blowing bubbles as they go. These bubbles will reflect light back at their prey, stunning and frightening them, resulting in them bunching closer together. This is when the other whale(s) strike - they will take turns diving down and then coming to the surface with their mouths open, taking big gulps as they get to the top. To all of us on the boats, this technique looks similar to a rolling boil like you see on a pot of water on the stove.

After a bit our time with this pair was up and we went back into search mode. We were looking for seals, sea lions, and potentially other whales too. We got word of a potential sighting of orca near Crofton from shore so we zoomed in that direction. Unfortunately, it was a sighting where there was no other boats on scene, meaning it was all up to us to locate them. We searched and searched to no avail. Sometimes this happens - you never know when our whales could start doing deep dives or change directions, so even if we know there are whales in an area, sometimes they might vanish!
We didn’t give up faith though as another orca was sighting elsewhere. We crossed through the Southern Gulf Islands and out of Porlier Pass where we were greeted by a matriline of 4 orca travelling southbound down the Strait of Georgia. These orca were identified as the T065As:

T065A Fingers / Artemis ♀ (1986)
T065A2 Ooxjaa ♂ (2004)
T065A4 Ellifrit ♀ (2011)
T065A6 Callisto ♀ (2018)

This is an odd family as two of Artemis’ middle children have left to travel the solo life. T065A5 Indy left first and has been travelling mostly by himself for a couple of years. At only 10 years old this is very odd, especially for a male orca. T065A3 Amir, a 17-year-old male, stuck with his mother and siblings until the last year or so. These two brothers went on a brief adventure together around the southern waters of BC and into Washington before separating and going their own ways again.

The family today was finishing a hunt when we first approached. After a couple of tail slaps they continued on their way, travelling together, likely looking for their next meal. Each orca needs to eat a couple of hundred pounds of food a day to keep their weight up, so a family of 4 like this would need to hunt on average 5-8 harbour seals every single day. That’s a lot of hunting!

Aside from our whales we also stopped at Stinky Rocks off of Valdez Island to have a peek at our pinnipeds. Today the area was bustling with different species - our Harbour seals were cozy and nestled up together snoozing away, our Steller sea lions were grumbling and fighting each other for the best area on the rocks, and a Great Blue Heron was fishing in the tidepools.

Please enjoy these photos taken by Marine Naturalists Val Watson and Aly Kohlman!

October 11, 2024 - Slappy Humpbacks and a familiar family of Orca

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