June 27, 2024, 3:30pm - Humpbacks everywhere!
When we leave the dock we rarely know where the whales are. They can be right inside our harbour, or an hour away in the middle of the Georgia Strait. From the moment we get on the boat, our crew has their eyes peeled for whales. Today we had barely left the harbour when we found our first humpback, a whale named Lure (BCY1248) who was spotted hanging out around Snake island. We always try to identify each whale we come into contact with and we can do this in 2 different ways. The easiest way is if the whale flukes (brings their tail out of the water) we can look at the markings on the ventral side (underside). The coloration, which can range from all black to all white, also has different markings we can use to identify the individual. Flukes are as unique as fingerprints! We can also look at dorsal fins, which are unique as well, but ID’ing by dorsal can be a little more difficult to master. Luckily, Lure made it easy for us to identify them by bringing their fluke nice and high out of the water!
Finding a whale so quickly after leaving the dock was a good sign of things to come because we ended up spending time with 6 other humpbacks during our trip: Snoopy (BCY0770), Graze (BCY0523), Strike (BCX1675), Tempest (BCX0837), Tempest’s 2024 calf and Zig Zag (BCX1193)!
We were especially excited to see Tempest today. In November, Tempest was photographed by OceanWise researchers with a drone and was very clearly pregnant. We’ve all been waiting with bated breath for her return. Tempest is an experienced mother, having already raised 3 calves in past seasons. We’re very happy to see her new calf is looking happy and healthy! Female humpbacks typically have a calf every 2-3 years. The calf spends the first year of its life with mom, and then they go their separate ways. Tempest had her first recorded calf in 2007, and then not again until 2019, and 2021. We may never know if she had any calves during that 12-year gap, or how many she may have lost along the way. Either way, we are VERY happy to see a bumbling new baby here in the Salish Sea. Check out OceanWise’s photos of Tempest on their Instagram!
A very pregnant Tempest! Photos from OceanWise Research’s Instagram post.
We also briefly spent time with Snoopy today (also known as Gibbous or Lunar). This was our first encounter with him this season and he seemed very focused on eating. Snoopy has made an incredible round-trip journey from Hawaii and now he’s got to start putting weight back on before doing it all once again in the winter. Snoopy is always a crew favorite and his fluke tells a sad tale. When he brings his fluke out of the water you can see that at one time he had rope wrapped around both sides of his fluke. It’s estimated that 1 out of every 2 humpbacks in the Salish Sea have some form of entanglement scarring. While we are thankful that Snoopy escaped his ropes, this isn’t the case for all entangled whales.
As well as humpbacks, we also saw river otters and an eagle today. You can see photos from today’s trip below. All photos were taken by naturalist Aly Kohlman.
Lure with a tail slap
Lure has a hole in his fluke which we can use to help identify him
Snoopy wasn’t fluking for us but we were still able to use his dorsal fin to obtain an ID
Strike shows off her Dorsal as well!
Graze resting up at the surface. She has a very identifiable dorsal in case we can’t get a fluke.
Zig Zag bringing her fluke out of the water before a long dive
Flukes range from all black to all white with different markings on them. Looking at this fluke we can see that this whale is Zig Zag.
Tempest and her 2024 calf. Look at that little baby’s face!
Mom and baby going for a dive.
Tempest fluking
Can you see the barnacles on the end of Tempest’s fluke?
A family of river otters checking out the boat.
A bald eagle resting on a light post.