It was another beautiful sunny day as we left Nanaimo Harbour and started heading south. We travelled down Northumberland Channel, taking in the beautiful cliffs of Gabriola Island as we did. Soon Northumberland Channel brought us to another, even narrower passageway, Dodd Narrows! Dodd is a wildlife hotspot, thanks to the currents that are created as the tide changes.

When the tide rises and falls, it moves large volumes of water through this narrow area, meaning for it all to get through it has to get going really fast. At times the current through here can reach 15 knots of speed. This means nothing for our boats with our powerful engines, but for smaller vessels, like sail boats, they have to wait for times when this current isn’t running to make the crossing, since otherwise the current would be too powerful!

Other than affecting the boats, these currents also agitate the surface of the water, introducing more oxygen to the water, making the perfect conditions for some invertebrates that need high oxygen concentration than is normally found on this side of the island. Things like cup corals, surf anemones, and huge beds of Gooseneck Barnacles and California mussels can be seen here at low tide.

After crossing Dodd, we continued into Stuart Channel and followed the Vancouver Island Shoreline south, all the way down to Saltspring Island, here we turned east, and continued to find what’s usually a haul-out of Harbour Seals. Today these little seals weren’t using the rocks to haul-out though, and instead we saw them in the water, with just their little heads sticking out of the water like a submarine.

Leaving the Harbour Seals to their relaxing day in the water, we continued south, this time in Trincomali channel, travelling between Saltspring Island and Galiano island. We followed this all the way to the South end of Galiano Island to Active Pass. Active Pass is another narrow passageway that is a major crossing point from the Strait of Georgia to get inside the southern Gulf Islands. This area is famous for its tricky currents and high traffic density, but we like it for it’s wildlife! Just like in Dodd Narrows, the currents here introduce more oxygen and you see lots of animals here taking advantage of the high productivity. Today it was a little River Otter spending time in the water, as well as a large raft of sea lions on the water!

We continued through Active Pass, travelling back north along the east side of Galiano Island this time. It was a beautiful journey until we came across the sea lion haul-out near Porlier Pass! These Sea Lions decided they didn’t want to be watched by us, and in what seemed like a coordinated decision, they stampeded into the water. It was quite the sight to behold! The Sea Lions that we saw charge off the rocks are the large Steller Sea Lions, and getting to watch about 2,800 pounds of blubber and muscle moving that quickly is a pretty exciting thing.

Eventually we began to run out of time in our search, and still no whales. As we continued north and eventually crossed Dodd Narrows it seems that the whales outsmarted us today! That’s okay though, since the day wasn’t wasted getting to see all the other marine mammals and other wildlife along the way. All of our guests onboard today received a voucher to try again another day!

The photos during the tour were taken by the onboard Marine Naturalist Aly Kohlman and can be viewed below!