We had our first double species day of the year today! As our open-boat keta left the Nanaimo Harbour, we didn’t know exactly what the day had in store for us. We headed out into the Strait of Georgia, the plan was to cross towards Howe Sound where we had been informed that there was a pod of Killer Whales travelling north. Along the way, another boat came across a humpback whale travelling solo, close to our path to the other whales! You know that we had to stop and try for both species.

Before we made it across though, other wildlife had caught our eyes. There was a haul-out of Harbour Seals along the rocky shoreline that we stopped to see. These little fuzzy critters are super important to the Salish Sea, not only due to their abundance but also their place in the food chain. They are not only great predators in their own right, but they also serve as an important prey source for others, most notably the Biggs Orca. Today there was no hunting or being hunted with our seals and we got to watch them relaxing, enjoying being out of the water on this cloudy day.

Next, there was a group of Steller Sea Lions. The Sea Lions fill a similar ecological role as the seals, eating small fish, cephalopods, and salmon mostly. They are much larger than the Harbour Seals, weighing in at between 800-2800 pounds, depending on their sex. Male Sea Lions tend to get much larger than their female counterparts, a phenomenon known as sexual dimorphism. Again, these large animals are on the menu for the Biggs Orca, although they are tougher prey than the smaller, less aggressive Harbour Seals.

A few birds were sharing this stop with our Pinnipeds, including Gulls, Oyster Catchers, and a beautiful Bald Eagle watching over us.

From here we continued towards Howe Sound, where soon we saw the big bushy blow of a humpback whale on the horizon, our first returning humpback of the season! Although we did see a humpback back in February, we think that whale was likely getting the last bit of food in before migration. The humpback whale today we think has returned from their southern breeding grounds.

Although this whale never ended up showing their tail off for us, the distinct shape of their dorsal fin combined with scarring let us identify this individual as BCY0523 Graze! Graze was doing what most humpbacks are at the beginning of their time back in their feeding grounds; feeding! She was doing longer dives, in an area of high productivity. While they are down in their breeding grounds, there isn’t as much food for them, so they mostly survive off of their fat reserves. Towards the end of their time there, their fat will start to run low. This means they are pretty hungry by the time we see them here in BC. They will focus most of their energy on restoring this fat reserve and eating as much as possible in the first couple of months. After they have more fat built up, we start to see more of their energy going into socializing, surface activities, and playful activities.

We left Graze to her grazing and continued into Howe Sound where we caught up with a pod of Biggs orca! After snapping a couple of photos we IDed these whales as the T065Bs which is a family of 4 orca travelling together:

T065B Chunk ♀ (1993)
T065B1 Birdsall ♂ (2011)
T065B2 Nettle ♂ (2019)
T065B3 (2023)

The last time we saw this group, they were practicing their hunting skills on an unfortunate Murre (a seabird) that had come in too close to the young orca. Today it’s possible that they were putting these newly honed hunting skills to use, with a possible hunt happening under the surface. They slowly travelled north further into Howe Sound as we spent time with them. Howe Sound has been a hot spot for our whales lately, and this is likely due to the amount of food present there. Over the last few decades there have been lots of conservation and restoration efforts focused on Howe Sound, turning what was once a polluted industry-dominated area into this beautiful area teeming with life. There is not only the wildlife that we get to see at the surface, like Seals, Sea Lions, Birds, and whales here, but lots hidden under the surface as well. There is a rare glass sponge reef in the depths of the sound that has also been recorded to be recovering due to the changes being made.

After our time with the orca ended, we started the journey back across the strait and into the Nanaimo harbour. The onboard naturalists Aly Kohlman and Hayleigh Hilbert captured some amazing photos from this trip of all the wonderful wildlife we got to see, all of which can be viewed below!

April 21, 2024 - Graze and T065Bs - Our first double species day of the season!

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