We left the dock for our morning tour and made our way into the Strait of Georgia hoping to find some whales. It wasn’t long until we found a shy humpback doing long dives. We assumed they were busy with their breakfast and decided to move on. Luckily the captain got a report of orca in Howe Sound and we were off to see them! Although Howe Sound isn’t too far across the Strait, if the wind picks up it can be a bit of an adventure. It ended up being a little bumpy out in the Strait, so we got to play around in the waves. Between the waves and the rain, we all got a little bit wet but it was all worth it! Howe Sound was sheltered from the wind and it was almost flat calm once we entered. With such perfect spotting conditions, it didn’t take long to see 5 orca swimming alongside the log booms.

Though these 5 orca were from 3 different families, they were working co-operatively as they swam from log boom to log boom looking for lunch. During the winter months, these log booms are filled with sea lions but during the summer months, the sea lions migrate to their breeding grounds and the booms empty out. That was the case today for our orca as they did not chance upon a single sea lion.

As unfortunate as that sounds, Jude had an even more unfortunate hunting incident last September. Jude and another male T051 were found trapped in Barnes Lake, Alaska. It is believed they ended up there during a high tide cycle while they were hunting prey. Once trapped, researchers were concerned about their ability to find food in the inland lake. Being transients, this dynamic duo needed access to meat such as seals or sea lions. They were monitored for many weeks to ensure they weren’t losing too much weight. The boys spent several weeks trapped in the lake before research groups were able to help them escape. Due to the drastically changing tides in the lake, there were only short windows of opportunities they could use to ensure the water was deep enough for a rescue. An especially high tide came about 6 weeks later, and it took 14 boats to split into two teams to free the two large males finally. Rescuers took recordings of female family members and played them back to the boys, who followed the sounds out of the lake. This wasn’t the first time orcas have been trapped in Barnes Lake, with a pod of offshore orca facing a similar fate to these two big boys in 1994. In that occurrence, several animals were freed from the lake. You can read more about Jude’s adventures in Barnes Lake here!

The other whales with Jude are experiencing some of their own drama. Nahanni was there with her young calf, born last year (2023). Nahanni, her mother T086A Eider, and her sister T086A3 Tyndall have all had calves around the same time this year. This is likely why Nahanni and Tyndall are not currently travelling with their mother. Matriarchs lead the pod, and with Eider having two grandbabies and one of her own, that’s a lot of tiny mouths to feed! Despite this, the calf seems to be doing very well. Tasli and Zengo have also separated from their mother who has also recently had a new calf, although we don’t know if this has anything to do with the siblings leaving their mother’s side.

After our time with the orca, we started to make our way back to Nanaimo as we were nearing the end of our tour time. Fate, however, had different plans as we stumbled upon Tempest (BCX0837) and her new calf! Since our humpbacks return to us year after year, it’s wonderful to see which whales bring back new calves. This was the first time we’ve seen her this season and it was wonderful to meet her new baby! We have only seen one other cow-calf pair so far as a company, and it was so exciting to add her to the list of new moms. Tempest is one of our girls from the Mexican population. She would have given birth to this little one in the warm water of the Bajas and nursed her calf to build up their fat reserves for the long journey here. Now that they are here, mom Tempest will be eating as much as she can to replenish her fat stores. Considering her last meal would have been here last year, it’s so impressive humpbacks are able to nurse their young AND complete their long migration back. Truly a super mom!

Not only did we have a double whale species day, but we were also fortunate enough to see Steller sea lions and a bald eagle. What a trip! All photos today were taken by naturalist Aly Kohlman.

June 27, 2024, 10:30am - Baby fever!

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