It was another sunny day as we had all three of our boats leaving the Nanaimo Harbour for our morning trip. We started the journey by heading south, into Northumberland Channel which runs between Nanaimo and Gabriola Island. This channel leads us into the Southern Gulf Islands by passing through an area called Dodd Narrows. This narrow passage is only a couple hundred feet across, and about 80 feet deep, making it produce a strong current when the tides are changing. You can imagine the water flowing through like a garden hose, without obstruction it flows freely. When the opening is made more narrow, like if you put your thumb over part of it, the water will move much faster since the same volume has to move through the smaller area in the same amount of time. That’s the same concept as at Dodd. When the tide is moving in or out, a large volume of water moves through this small area, so it does it very quickly! The currents reach about 9 knots, or about 17km/h when it’s flowing at max. It’s an important place to research if you are sailing in the area, since the strong currents can prevent smaller motors from getting through, like sailboats! That’s not something we have to worry about with our vessels though, since we have powerful engines that move us at around 30 knots, so we can get through the narrows easily, even at max flow.

After passing through Dodd, the boats were able to fan out to search, with two heading towards Gabriola Pass to poke out into the Strait of Georgia, while the other stuck to the inside of the islands. Taking Gabriola Pass, it is quite close to Stinky Rocks, one of the best places to look for pinnipeds, so we made a quick stop there to take a look at the Seals and Sea Lions that use the reef as a haul out. Today there were both species here: the smaller Harbour Seals as well as the larger Steller Sea Lions. Although they are both pinnipeds seeing them is a completely different experience. Harbour seals can weigh up to 300 pounds and tend to not make much noise. While you may hear the occasional cough or sneeze, hearing much more from these guys is pretty uncommon. This time of year we do hear an exchange of squeaks and calls from mother to pup and vice versa, but other than in popping season they don’t make much noise. They also are more adapted to aquatic life than designed for movement on land, so if you are lucky enough to see a Harbour Seal moving around, it’s quite funny. They can’t rotate their flippers to walk, which allows them to maneuver much easier in the water, but without being able to walk, they instead Galumph! The best way I’ve found to describe this motion is that it looks like the seals are doing “the worm” across the rocks, or moving similar to a caterpillar.

Steller Sea Lions on the other hand can fully rotate those flippers and are often seen walking, running, and trampling each other when they’re on the rocks. They are also very loud, yelling at each other, birds passing by, our boats, and anything else that catches their attention. The Steller Sea Lions wouldn’t be breeding or pupping here (theoretically) so we shouldn’t see much in the way of mom-pup interactions. That being said, the pups have been recorded nursing for up to three years, so we do see some big babies still depending on mom in our waters.

Moving on from Stinky Rocks, they started searching in the waves of the Strait of Georgia and soon found a pair of humpback whales travelling together. It was Olympus (BCX2075) and Valiant (BCX1773)! Olympus seemed like she was just trying to enjoy the day, but Valiant had different plans. Valiant seemed like she was trying to get a rise out of Olympus, by cartwheeling and slapping her pectoral fins on the water right beside poor Olympus. Olympus must not actually have minded so much, since the two continued to travel closely together. They don’t always use this ability, but humpback whales can get moving pretty quickly, so she could likely have given Valiant the slip if she really wanted to. It was quite amusing for us to watch this interaction, not only because Valiant was so active at the surface, but also because we like to speculate about these sorts of social interactions. Usually, in a case like this, it would be a male bothering a female for some attention, but in this case, both of the animals are female. Maybe it was just a little playful fighting between friends.

Once our time with these rambunctious humpbacks was up, we continued back towards the Nanaimo Harbour, with just a quick break at the Gabriola Bluffs to take a look at the sandstone cliffs and cormorants that call the cliff home. It was sure an action packed day! There was lots of amazing photos from the day taken by the naturalists onboard Aly Kohlman, Desarae Poier, and Vanessa Vereschahen which can all be viewed below!

July 28, 2024, 10:30 am - Rambunctious Valiant with Olympus

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