It was an overcast day today, making this a great day for photos! We had the full fleet off the dock at noon with a lot of eyes on the water to spot our whales today! We noticed a Bald Eagle on one of the markers as we came through Gabriola pass, watching us as we watched back. Luck was in the air as we did not have to venture too far today before we spotted our first big blow from a Humpback in the Strait of Georgia, right outside of the pass we had just come through.
Before long we noticed a few more blows around us, and we were surrounded. We like to call this type of encounter “Humpback Soup” - it’s a great problem to have when you don’t know where to look because there are so many whales around you. With so many sightings in one trip, it makes our onboard naturalists have to work hard to get an identification on everyone we spot.
How do we ID our Humpbacks? We get out our telephoto lenses and we start shooting photos. We want a nice clear photo of the underside of their tail if possible. The underside of the tail is called the fluke. On occasion, we get what we like to call lazy tails where our whales do not want to bring that tail out of the water for us, in that case, we can use their dorsal fins for ID’ing! The humpbacks we identified today were: Astroboy (BCX2152), Bagheera (BCY0523 calf 2021), Crackle (BCY1227), Wiggins (BCX1602 calf 2022), Hendrix (BCY1278), Calypso (BCY1226), Dalmatian (BCY0994), Moresby (BCY0324 calf 2022), Ocular (BCX1705), Poptart (BCY1014), and a couple of friends who remain unknown.

With so many whales around we can say Humpback land has officially started up again this season, and we are thrilled! At one time whales were incredibly abundant here in the Salish Sea, with stories from the Coastal Salish people telling tales of how you could cross to our many Gulf Islands on their backs they were so abundant. With the humpbacks being an easy-to-spot slower moving whale unfortunately their numbers declined rapidly as they were relentlessly hunted for their oil.
Sadly, fewer and fewer blows were being seen as the whales were quickly being wiped out. We are overjoyed that people just like you came together and said no more, with outrage over the treatment of these majestic creatures the hunts were banned in the 1960’s. However, the Salish Sea remained desolate of Humpbacks for many years…then one day, a BLOW! It wasn’t until 1997 that a big beautiful blow was again documented in our waters. It was Big Mamma, our most famous Humpback and for good reason. She returned and returned with a mission, she has now brought us 8 babies (we saw one of them today, Moresby)!
Speaking of more work for our Naturalists, we now have around 500 Humpbacks that return to us each year, that is a lot of tails and dorsal fins to look through for a match! We are happy to do it, and even get excited when we get new calves in tow to add to our identification catalogues. This is also an example of how we can change our ways and behaviours and restore what was once lost!

After spending time in Humpback land we set off to meet a few other species. One is our bald Eagle. They had a rough time in the past as well with pesticides leading to a major population decline, but after some changes including the ban of DDT, we now have around 20,000 here on the Island! We got to see, hear and smell our large Steller Sea Lions always battling it out for the best spot on the rocks. We spotted some of the California Sea Lions at a favourite haulout of theirs on the log booms, they were a little calmer than our Stellers today! We also came across the cutest member of the pinniped family, the Harbour Seals. From there we finished our tour at the Gabriola Bluffs, an incredibly popular and populated nesting spot! Here we have the Cormorants, Gulls, Pigeon Gullimont, Swallows, Falcons and Eagles nesting in the area. We also noted a large flock of Steller’s Jays have been frequenting the Bluffs this season, maybe they are thinking about nesting here also!

Photos taken by Marine Naturalists Aly Kohlman, Hayleigh Hilbert, Lucy Willis and Val Watson.