Today the open boat left Nanaimo with the sun shining down on everyone bundled up in their bright red suits! These adventurers started their journey by heading into the Strait of Georgia and started to travel north. There had been a sighting of a pod of orca earlier in the day that we were hoping to pick up again near Denman Island. Along the way there, some other wildlife caught our eye, first, it was the Steller Sea lions that were causing a ruckus on the rocks. These are the largest species of Sea Lion that we see on our tours, and the third largest pinniped in the whole world. The species shows a lot of sexual dimorphism, meaning that the males and females of the species are very different to look at. While the females only get to be around 800 pounds or so, the males can be 2,800 pounds, with large, hairy, blubbery necks and giant teeth. The haul-out that we found today was mostly these large males, although lots were likely not to full size yet. You’ll notice in the photos of the sea lions that there are small circular scars on their bodies. These are caused by cookie-cutter sharks! As the name suggests, when these sharks bite their prey they remove a very distinctly shaped chunk, similar to what a cookie cutter takes out of dough. In low numbers, this doesn’t bother the sea lions too much, but when they get too abundant it starts to cause issues.

While watching the sea lions, there was also another visitor, a Bald Eagle! This seemed like they were around 4 years old since the white head feathers of the adult were nearly all filled in other than a few brown spots still. They will be fully white by the time they are 5 years old.

We continued heading north after leaving these animals behind. It was a long journey, but worth it when we finally saw what we were looking for, the black dorsal fins of orca in the distance! This was a pod that we’ve seen a few times in the last month or so, so it was easy to tell who we were looking at! It was the T049As! These are the 6 members who were here today:

T049A Nan ♀ (1986)
T049A1 Noah ♂ (2001)
T049A3 Nat ♂ (2011)
T049A4 Neptune ♂ (2014)
T049A5 Nebula ♀ (2017)
T049A6 Charlie II (2022)

Today these whales seemed to be finishing up a hunt and having a celebration afterwards! We saw spy hops, tail slaps, and very fast surfaces as we spent time with them. We like all the members of this pod for their own reasons (which we go over in detail in the last tour blog here).

Noah sometimes travels away from the rest of his pod and is even known for going into harbours and scaring kids learning to sail!

Today it wasn’t Noah who was stealing the show, but rather Nat who decided with it being spring it was time for him to show off what his momma gave him! While it doesn’t really have anything to do with the season since orca don’t breed in a “season” like some other animals, it was likely more a social or exciting thing for him. Nonetheless, we got to see, and get a photo of, a “sea snake” today! Transient Orca have lots of options still for breeding and social taboos that stop inbreeding so we know that Nat wasn’t actually trying to breed, it was likely just fun for him.

We got to watch these 6 whales play with each other at the surface and eventually left them with the beautiful mountains as a backdrop so we could start our trip home. All of the photos from today’s tour were taken by the onboard Marine Naturalist, Vanessa Vereschahen, and can be viewed below!

March 19, 2024 - The T049As near Denman Island

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