It was a sunny, calm afternoon as our vessels Kula and Cascadia left the Nanaimo Harbour and headed out into the Strait of Georgia to search for whales. The morning tour had success in finding a group of humpback whales not too far from Gabriola Island, so we decided to start the search there. They spread out to search a larger area and ended up about halfway across the Strait when the open boat came across something, it was the blows of a humpback whale!

Kula made it nearly all the way across the Strait to the White Islets without spotting a blow, but that’s okay since we got a great look at other wildlife before continuing to the whales that the other boat found. At the White Islets, we typically see Harbour Seals and Steller Sea Lions lounging on the rocks, but there is something else that has got us excited about the area lately, and that’s gulls! There are a bunch of nesting pairs there, and they seem to all have chicks now. We were lucky enough to spot one of the breeding pairs feeding their little fluffy chicks, regurgitating some food which the chicks hungrily gobbled up. A little gross, but a lot interesting!

After leaving the White Islets, we headed over to the other boats and joined with them watching a bunch of humpback whales. The open boat was able to ID the first pair of humpbacks in this area as Split Fluke (BCX1068) and Arial (BCY0767). These two appeared to be feeding in the area, travelling side by side and having synchronized movement as they surfaced for their breaths before arching their back to head beneath the surface. Under the water is where their food is waiting for them. Or more, trying to escape from these Leviathans. Humpback whales are eating machines, consuming up to 1.5 tonnes of food every day. Since they are eating tiny animals such as krill and small schooling fish, this means that they eat millions of animals every day.

On the way over to join in watching Split Fluke and Arial, Kula stumbled across a whale of their own. This whale didn’t end up lifting their tail to help us ID them, but luckily we recognized the dorsal fin belonging to Slice (BCX1057calf2021). Slice was also focused on eating, and without lifting that tail, we decided to leave him to it and continue over to the other humpback whales.

By the time Kula arrived, it seemed that there were some new whales in the mix, and the original pair didn’t hang around to socialize with the others. There were 4 whales here now, travelling in two pairs. Valiant (BCX1773) travelling with Prowler (BCX1660) as well as Coyote (BCX0837calf2021) travelling with Yakima (BCX2182). These four were travelling very close together at first but then spread out with Valiant and Prowler heading towards the mainland, and Coyote and Yakima, heading towards one of our boats. Once it became clear that they had taken an interest in the boats, we immediately shut the engines off and floated there until they had satisfied their curiosity. It can be dangerous for whales to do this, as overfamiliarity with boats can lead to issues for the whales if the boat doesn’t know what is happening, or doesn’t want to wait for the whales to leave them alone. If the engines are on, they can not only create noise for the whales but the moving propeller can physically injure them. Lucky for us, our captains are very experienced and knew exactly what to do in this situation.

While this close encounter was happening, one more whale showed up unexpectedly, it was Beak (BCX1606). Beak did two surfaces, just beside the boat each time, maybe he was joining in on the curiosity under the surface? After the second fluke, he seemed to move on and we didn’t see him again. During the close encounter with Yakima and Coyote, they started blowing bubbles near the boats and under the hull, creating a very interesting sound! It was a pretty unique encounter.

It seemed that the whales finally lost interest in us and moved on, and so did we! We had one final stop along the way, at the Gabriola Bluffs! This amazing sandstone cliff system is typically where we find our nesting Cormorants and sometimes other birds like the Bald Eagles! Today it was just the cormorants though, as they sat in the cracks of the cliffs and on the trees. A bit further south of here, we did manage to spot a Bald Eagle on the log boom though, so that was a great end to the trip!

Photos from today’s tour were taken by naturalists Lucy Willis and Val Watson are all available to view below.