Our open boat Cascadia went out this sunny afternoon. We had seen a pod of orca in the morning and we were hoping to find them again this afternoon. We headed south and found them coming into Porlier Pass. This passage runs between the North side of Galiano Island and the South side of Valdes Island. While this channel isn’t as narrow as Dodd is, the current can still run fast here. It can be bumpy on the way in and out, but our boats have strong motors so we can handle the currents at their strongest without worries, usually it’s pretty fun to ride the waves from the currents!

We found the T077s heading into the inside of the Southern Gulf Islands via Porlier, but then they changed their minds and immediately headed back out, without spending even five minutes on the inside! It was the same pod that we saw during the morning trip, so we immediately recognized Asja and her kids:

T077 Asja ♀ (1981)
T077C Neftali ♂ (2006)
T077D Alycon ♀ (2009)
T077E Misneach (2016)

We say “whales” when referring to orcas even though they are the largest member of the dolphin family. Dolphins are part of a group known as “toothed whales”. So all dolphins are whales but not all whales are dolphins! An analogy to understand this is all humans are primates but not all primates are humans.

The next biggest member of the dolphin family is a bottlenose dolphin. They can be around 3 meters long. Female orcas in comparison can be between 5.5 to over 7 meters long, with the biggest on our coast being 7.1 meters. The males are even bigger, usually around 6.5 to 8 meters. Our biggest, T011A Rainy, is 8.3 meters long! For context, our zodiac boat is 8.15 meters from bow to stern. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, male killer whales’ fins can get to be over six feet tall. T077C Neftali is sprouting, which means his fin is starting to grow more, and it could potentially reach that height when he’s full-grown. Fully grown female killer whales have fins that are about 3-4 feet tall in contrast. This is due to the sexual dimorphism that Killer Whales exhibit, meaning that the males and females will usually look different from each other! Both male and female killer whales are physically mature at around 20 years old.

Soon it was time to leave the T077s to their travels, and we headed out in hopes of coming across humpback whales in the Strait of Georgia. We didn’t have to travel for long before we saw a blow in the distance! Our mission was a success! As we got closer, we realized it was actually 2 humpback whales travelling together. We were lucky enough that our first group of surfaces with the whales they lifted their tails high and we got great looks at the underside of the tails, which is exactly what we need for ID. They were immediately recognized as Smiley (BCY0995) and Windy (BCY0893), two adult humpback whales travelling together. After this first tail lift, we didn’t see them do it much anymore, but thanks to their very distinct dorsal fins we still knew which one we were looking at when they broke the surface to breathe.

While watching these two, we saw the blows of even more whales in the distance! After a while, we left Smiley and Windy to their travels and headed over to the other animals. We were sure happy that we did since the pair that we were seeing was a Cow-calf pair. This is a fancy way to say a mom travelling with her brand-new baby! These two also didn’t lift their tails up for us to be able to confirm an ID, we think it could be Scoop (BCX0870), but we aren’t 100% confident on that one! There was another whale in the distance that we managed to get a photo of the dorsal fin, and from looking at the photos later, we were able to tell that this whale was Snoopy (BCY0770)!

Watching the humpback whales surfacing around us in the distance was so peaceful, especially getting to hear their powerful exhales brought to us on the light breeze. Nothing beats humpbackland!

Eventually it was time to leave the humpbacks behind as well, and we started to head back home to Nanaimo. It seemed we couldn’t avoid the whales though, since as we were travelling past Thrasher Rock, we saw the T077s in the distance. We couldn’t help ourselves and spent a couple of surfaces with them again before continuing on our way. What a great way to end the tour! We were able to drink in the scenery as we returned to Nanaimo and eventually found ourselves alongside the dock once more.

The onboard Marine Naturalist Val Watson captured some amazing photos of the time spent with the whales and wildlife this afternoon, all of which can be viewed below!

June 21, 2024, 3:30pm - T077s trolling the Valdes Coast and a bunch of Humpbacks!

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