May 1, 2024 - A new month, perfect for a double species day!

It was a double species day in the Salish Sea! One of our zodiacs headed out of the harbour and went south in search of whales. We took what we call the inside passage through the Gulf Islands before deciding to try our luck in the Strait of Georgia. We made a quick stop at Stinky Rocks for a view of some Steller Sea Lions. This is a favourite haul out for them during our winter and spring before they head up to Alaska for their breeding season. We call this Stinky Rocks because sea lion feces is remarkably pungent, it’s hard to ignore the smell!

Out in the Strait, we stumbled across two Humpback Whales! Around this time of year, they’re starting to come back from their breeding grounds in either Hawaii or Baja/Mexico. Oddly enough, one of the humpbacks who spend their summer here around Vancouver Island has been recorded migrating to islands south of Japan! That’s a total round trip of 15,000 kilometres! However, most of our whales don’t migrate that far. One of the whales we found today was identified as BCY1218 Kata, and the other was
Moraine (Glaciers 2021 calf). Although most of the humpbacks in these waters are catalogued, sometimes they like to surprise us. The way we identify these whales is primarily by using the underside of their tail flukes. Each fluke has a unique pattern of black and white, and we use that to identify each individual. We can also use their dorsal fins if there is a distinctive shape or scar.

After watching the Humpback Whales, we headed north into Howe Sound. Here, we found two pods of orca travelling together! Just like with the humpbacks, we can identify each orca individually. Unlike humpbacks, we use the dorsal fin and the white saddle patch behind it. Today, we found:

T023C Cindy/Freshwater ♀ (1990)
T023C3 Durban ♀ (2009)
T023C4 Bunzie (2013)
T023C5 (2018)
T023C6 (2023)

T124D Field ♀ (1996)
T124D1 Salish II (2014)
T124D3 (2022)

The “T” in the ID number stands for Transient, which is an ecotype of killer whale that only eats marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and small cetaceans. We also call them Biggs Killer Whales, named after researcher Michael Bigg. In the 1970s when captures for aquariums were still legal, Michael Bigg was tasked with estimating how many orcas there were in the Salish Sea available for capture. While on his mission, Bigg noticed that the dorsal fins and saddle patches were different on each whale. He used these differences to count the orcas in the area and eventually determined that there were not enough orcas to continue capturing. During his mission, Bigg designated each pod with the letter T and a number (such as 23 and 124). T023 was the 23rd whale identified, and T124 was the 124th, and so on. Then, each calf gets a letter. So the first calf would be A, the second calf would be B, and so on. So today, we saw the third calf of T023 and the fourth calf of T124 and their respective families.

After watching these orca for about an hour, we left them behind to continue their day and headed back across the Strait of Georgia to Nanaimo.

Check out the photos from the trip taken by our naturalist Hayleigh Hilbert!