June 15, 2024, 10:30am - Whales Everywhere We Look!
It was another beautiful day as we had two of our vessels leaving the dock. When the boats left the harbour they headed out into the Strait of Georgia to start their search. It didn’t take long before our boats saw a sign of whales in the distance, it was humpback blows! As it turned out, the two boats had found different humpback whales from each other.
Let’s start with the open boat! They found a nice little bowl of Humpback Soup! This means that there was a lot of humpbacks in the area. If you think of the Strait as the broth, the humpbacks would be the chunky noodles and chicken in it. Out of these whales, we were able to identify the following whales with confidence: Bagheera (BCY0523calf2021), Coyote (BCX0837 calf 2021), Squirrel/Smoke (BCX2183), Windy (BCY0893) and Smiley (BCY0995)!
Four of these whales, Bagheera, Coyote, Squirrel, and Windy seemed to be socializing when we got there, spending time rolling at the surface, trumpeting when they exhaled, and they even got a little curious about our boat! Sometimes this happens, especially when the whales are in social mode instead of feeding mode. It’s important to remember that these animals can be unpredictable, and to be extra cautious when watching them. If they surface closer than the 100m regulated distance it’s safest for both yourself and the animals to cut you engines and float until they are the appropriate distance away again. This is what we did while the three younger whales approached us. Windy seemed less interested in us, and went off to join Smiley who was feeding a little bit further away!
While this was happening, our semi-covered vessel was spending time with their own humpback whale, one who we’ve seen the last couple days, but which hasn’t been so common of a whale in previous years: CRC-21677! The only other sightings of this whale according to HappyWhale was around Hornby Island in 2023. It’s interesting that we’ve been seeing so much of it over the past week! It likely is hanging out here since there is such an abundance of food. We guess this mostly because it appeared to have so much extra energy, as it was breaching and chin slapping for most of the time we spent with it. A single breach from a fully grown humpback whale takes the same amount of energy that a human takes to run a marathon! It’s a rare sight early in the season since they have just returned from their migration, where they mostly survive off the energy of the fat reserves that they build here over the summer months. This amazing show of power continued for a while until it seemed the whale was satisfied.
It was just in time as well, since our vessels heard word that there was orca spotted not too far from where we were. We decided to leave the humpbacks behind and head in that direction. Upon reaching the orca, it became clear that there was a T-party going on, as in, there was multiple pods of transient orca spending time together. We were able to ID the following pods:
T123 Sidney ♀ (~1985)
T123A Stanley ♂ (2000)
T123C Lucky ♀ (2012)
T123D Darcy ♀ (2018)
T086A3 Tyndall ♀ (2011)
T086A3A (2024)
T071B1 Zengo ♀ (2013)
T071B2 Tasli/Nemo ♂ (2018)
These whales seemed to be on a mission, travelling for the entire time that we spent with them. This group of whales is pretty special since you get a great example of every shape and size of whales when spending time with them. T086A3A was just born this year so they are still small, squishy, and slightly orange in colouration. We also have lots of females and older juveniles that show what the “average orca” would look like, and we have Stanley, who is a massive fully grown male. The orca exhibit sexual dimorphism, meaning that when mature, the males and females tend to look very different from each other. The most obvious difference is in the 6-foot tall dorsal fin, compared to the 4 foot tall of the females, but all the other fins are proportionally larger as well. The other cool thing about the group is the T071B siblings travelling together. Usually younger whales such as these would still be travelling with their mom, but these two decided to venture off together and have been seen travelling with Tyndall and her calf quite a bit.
Eventually it came time to leave these whales behind as well and start the journey home to Nanaimo, but wait, is that more humpback blows?
Yes, it seems that before we could make it back, we found more humpbacks! Well, it was a lot of the same that we saw earlier in the trip, but mixed up a bit, and with a few new flukes in the mix!
It was the open boat this time that was treated to a show of athleticism from the whales, with Squirrel/Smoke (BCX2183) and Bagheera (BCY0523calf2021) still together, but this time they were taking to the skies! We saw multiple breaches out of these two and some pectoral fin slapping.
Kula was in the middle of humpback soup again, this time with Moresby (BCY0324calf2022), Coyote (BCX0837 calf 2021), Valiant (BCX1773), and Smiley (BCY0995), plus one whale that didn’t show us their tail so we haven’t been able to match them yet.
Since the time for our tour was running out we couldn’t spend too much time with either of these final groups of whales, and we eventually returned to the Harbour. It was a fantastic trip with so many whales! The onboard naturalists Aly Kohlman (Semi-covered Boat) and Vanessa Vereschahen (Open Boat) got some amazing photos, all of which can be viewed below!
A good look at Bagheera’s flukes. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Coyote’s dorsal fin. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Squirrel/Smoke has unique white scarring on their dorsal fin which makes them easy to ID. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
A close look at this humpbacks blowholes. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Windy has a large scar in front of his dorsal from a satellite tag. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
CRC-21677 fluking. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
A huge breach from CRC-21677. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
CRC-21677’s tail from another angle. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
T086A3A, T071B1 Zengo, T123A Stanley. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
T086A3 Tyndall, T071B1 Zengo and T123D Darcy. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
T086A3A with T071B1 Zengo behind and T086A3 Tyndall in front of them. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
T123A Stanley showing his eye patch. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
T071B1 Zengo and T071B2 Tasli/Nemo. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
T086A3 Tyndall has a distinctive notch in her dorsal fin making her easy to ID. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
T123 Sydney with T123A Stanley’s dorsal fin in front of her. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Two of the orca breaking the surface of the waves. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Matriarch, T123 Sidney. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Moresby’s tail. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
Coyote showing off their flukes. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
The underside of Smiley’s tail flukes. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
Valiant surfacing. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
Valiant going down for a dive. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
A mystery humpback surfacing next to Valiant heading down for a dive. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
The rake marks on Valiant’s tail are from orca. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
A large male Stellar Sea Lion basking in the sun after a dip. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
Two stellars having a dispute with an audience. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
Harbour Seals hauled out. Photo by Aly Kohlman.
Squirrel/Smoke breaching. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
The pectoral fins of a humpback are around a third the length of their body. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Pecs up! Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Can you see where this whale’s eye is? Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Another huge breach. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Splash landing. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
It almost looks like this whale is floating at the surface. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.
Squirrel/Smoke. Photo by Vanessa Vereschahen.