Part of the fun of watching whales in the wild is that you never really know what you’re going to get! These wild animals are going about their day-to-day lives and we get a quick glimpse into this. Sometimes you catch them travelling, sometimes they’re hunting, and other times (like today) it can be hard to describe what they are doing.

Soon after our tour left the dock, we heard of a pod of 5 orca that were heading into the Malaspina Strait, to the east of Texada Island. Since there weren’t any other reports to go on, we headed in that direction. The crossing there was beautiful and flat, so it didn’t take us long before we arrived where we thought the whales could be, given the time and direction they were reported earlier.

Soon we saw it, the black triangular dorsal fin of an orca, we had found the pod! Or had we? as we approached it was still the same whale surfacing over and over again. We quickly identified this whale as:

T023 Janice ♀ (≤ 1964)

As we approached the 200m that we watch orca from, she decided something different. She turned right towards us and started swimming in our direction. When this happens what we have to do is shut our engines down and free-float until the whale gets the appropriate distance away from us again. As she came closer, we started to hear something. Janice was vocalizing under the water loud enough that we could hear it from the surface! Our waters are very hard to see through, thanks to the huge amounts of microorganisms that are living in it. This poor visibility combined with the countershading that orca have, means sometimes they can be close to us and we still can’t see them in the water. Countershading is the type of camouflage that is common in the ocean, with a darker top compared to a light-coloured bottom, allowing them to blend into the dark ocean beneath them when viewed from above, but also the light sunny skies when viewed from below.

During the first close pass, we were all excited and had our cameras out but didn’t think she came by us again. Looking back at our own videos we noticed that Janice was actually only a couple of meters away from us, just a white streak visible! Here is the video pointing it out:

With Janice by herself and the rest of the pod reported to be with her earlier, we searched around for them after leaving Janice to her circling. We searched up into a nearby inlet, wondering is that’s where they were hiding, but didn’t find them. The high rocky cliffs and calm waters were beautiful though.

Soon we left the Malaspina Strait and headed back to the Nanaimo side. Before returning to the dock we stopped at the bluff along Gabriola Island where we saw a few cormorants readying their nests for their breeding season, as well as a couple of Bald Eagles keeping a watchful eye over Northumberland Channel.

Our final, rainy stop was at the log booms at the Harmac Pulp Mill to see the sea lions that were hanging out there. We ended up seeing both species of sea lion, most of them were the smaller California Sea Lions but at least one young Steller Sea Lion was also lazily laying on the logs. Another interesting sight here was a small female sea lion. Most of the sea lions of both species that we see are male and majority juveniles as well, This female really highlighted the size difference between the sexes in these animals, with the larger males towering over her as they stood on the logs. Maybe with more females being spotted and males sticking around longer we will eventually find ourselves in the breeding grounds for the sea lions instead of having them all migrate away in the summer. Only time will tell though!

The rain continued to fall on us as we returned to the dock in Nanaimo. This was a very interesting trip with behaviour from a lot of our animals that aren’t very common to see (and hear) during our tours! Photos from the tour taken by Marine Natualists Aly Kohlman and Val Watson ca be viewed below!

March 25, 2024 - T023 in Malaspina Strait

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