It was a cloudy, west coast day when we had two of our vessels leaving the harbour on the morning of June 1st. We decided to spread the boats out, head into the more open waters of the Strait of Georgia and see what we could find! As we travelled, we saw what looked like a little cloud of mist being shot into the air and then quickly dissipating, it was a blow!

Wait, it was actually two blows! As we approached it became clear that we were looking at a pair of Humpback whales travelling together. These two seemed to be feeding in the area, spending a few minutes below the surface of the water eating up tiny microoraganisms before returning to the surface for a few breaths. This time of year is super important for the humpback whales, as they are just returning to our waters after their long, 6000km journey south to their breeding and feeding grounds. Since they only feed opportunistically down there they rely on their fat reserves for energy. That means they are quite literally starving by the time they make it back here! Over the course of the summer we se the humpbacks get more and more round until they are back to their normal end of season selves again. When they are going for feeding dives it’s quite common for them to lift their tails up out of the water to help propel them downwards in the water column. Using the patterns on the bottom of these tails is how we identify the humpback whales, and the first two we saw were Beak (BCX1606)and Crackle (BCY1227)! Beak is nearly all black on his underside with a few white “strokes” along it, with the big one close to the middle on the righthand side being the best ID feature. Crackle on the other hand has big white markings on their fluke with some dark circular scars from barnacles being one of the ways we ID them. These two continued feeding as we watched them for a while.

Soon our time was up, and we continued searching in the Strait. We soon came across another group of humpback whales, this time with Spock (BCY1134), Hendrix (BCY1278), and Neptune (BCY1021) travelling together. They were also feeding until one of the whales seemed to get curious about one of our vessels and surfaced close by to check us out. While this behaviour is pretty rare, it’s not unheard of, so all of our captains are trained on what to do if you think a whale might be approaching the vessel. It’s very easy; you stop. Engines get turned off and you are left to the whim of the whale.

After a few minutes of curiosity, Hendrix left us alone and went back to his humpback friends. We also left shortly after and continued down the strait, looking for wildlife. We came to one of our favourite places, Stinky Rocks were there was a big group of Steller Sea Lions causing a ruckus on the shore. One large male was dominating the haul-out, keeping the other smaller sea lions in line, at least from our perspective.

After watching the fights on the rocks we continued through Gabriola Pass to the inside of the Southern Gulf Islands, heading to home. The wildlife had something else in store though, as we spotted a huge splash of what turned out to be 3 orca hunting a California Sea Lion! It took a little help from our photos after the fact, but we were able to ID these whales as Tread and her kids, the T046B1s!

T046B1 Tread ♀ (2003)
T046B1A Tsakani ♀ (2015)
T046B1C (2022)

The hunt continued the entire time we spent with the orca, and (spoiler for the afternoon tour) for many hours after we first found them. The poor sea lion was fighting for its life. They have very sharp claws and teeth which can be used against the orca, and they can out maneuver them, but the orca have the advantage of numbers. Usually the whales will take turns assaulting their prey, wearing it down until it is exhausted and doesn’t have much fight left in it. This is when they strike and finish off the prey. It doesn’t always get to this point, sometimes the prey is victorious and will escape with it’s life, but today when we had bald eagles and other birds swooping in picking up peices of fat from the sea lion, we know he lost.

While sad for the sea lion, it’s great for this small pod of growing whales, and for the other birds who are likely taking food home to their own young. The thrilling time with the ravenous trio of orca soon came to an end as it was the end of our tour time, and our boats returned to Nanaimo.

It was such an exciting day with all the wildlife we spotted, and our onboard Marine Naturalists Vanessa Vereschahen and Aly Kohlman captured some amazing photos, all of which can be viewed below!

June 1, 2024, 10:30am - Some humpbacks travelling and the T046B1s hunting!

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