It was turning into a beautiful day as our boat left Nanaimo for the afternoon. We had a little bit of sunshine starting to poke through the clouds, with a little sprinkle of rain once in a while to remind us we were still on the west coast. Our boat started its search by heading south, into Northumberland Channel, and through a lovely area called Dodd Narrows. Dodd is usually pretty fun, especially if you catch it at the correct time. Four times a day there gets to be quite strong currents running through Dodd, thanks to our semi-diurnal tides. That’s just a fancy way of saying that we get two tide changes throughout the day. During the king tides, these currents get moving very quickly and can reach speeds of around 16 km/h.

Passing through here with our boats isn’t difficult since we can reach much higher speeds, but it’s still quite fun! We continued through Dodd, doing a quick search of the Southern Gulf Islands. We headed out from these inner waters through Gabriola Pass, passing between the southern end of Gabriola Island and the northern end of Valdes Island. We headed out into the Strait and were soon successful in our search. We saw the blow of a humpback whale in the distance!

We have a lot of regulations to follow when watching whales that are in place to protect the animals, the first of which is slowing down to under 7 knots when we are within a km of the whale. This slow approach not only reduces the noise that we make but also gives more reaction time in case the whales surface unexpectedly. Humpback whales can surface when and where you don’t expect them since they do many turns chasing their food under the water's surface. Sometimes the humpbacks may also get curious about our vessels and come over to investigate us. That is what happened with this whale, who we learned was Olympus (BCX2075). She ended up coming up closer than the 100m watch distance that we follow, but lucky for us we know what to do in these situations! It’s pretty easy, we just shut our engines down and float there until the whale leaves us alone and returns to a safe distance.

Olympus seemed to be enjoying herself, swishing her tail around near our boat, and even ended up splashing some of our guests with the water! It’s important to realize just how gigantic these animals are during these sorts of interactions. While Olympus is currently 6 years old and might not be fully grown, she has brought a calf back to our waters, meaning she must be getting close to full size. When fully grown, female humpbacks are slightly larger than males, getting to 17 meters in length and up to 44 tons! The cute little tail that Olympus was moving around in the water is super strong, being able to propel her 40-tonne body through the water. Estimates put that tail at weighing over 400 pounds! Olympus was also showing off other parts at the surface, such as her pectoral fins, and her rostrum, and we even got a close look at some of the tagalongs on her body.

It's estimated that there are hundreds of pounds of parasites that live on the humpback whale, with the majority being barnacles. There are two types of barnacles living on the whales, the white, plated acorn barnacles, and the fleshy, stalked goose-necked Barnacles. Both of the species that we were able to see on Olympus are species-specific, meaning that these species of barnacle would be different than similar-looking barnacles on a Gray Whale or Right Whale. These barnacles have free-swimming larval stages and would be part of the plankton that floats along with the currents of the ocean. When they find a good spot, they will glue their head to the spot and start building the rest of their bodies. The feeding appendages are basically like their feet that catch the food from the water and bring it to the mouth to slurp off. The benefit for the barnacle of living on the humpback whale is that the humpbacks are moving around all the time, so the barnacles don’t have to put as much energy into moving their feet through the water; the humpback whale drags the water over them! It’s a great system for the barnacle, but not so much for the humpback. At low densities, these barnacles don’t really bother the whale, but when they get too abundant they create more drag which would slow the whale down and make them spend more energy to travel. This is one of the theories as to why we see surface activity from the whales; to knock these freeloaders off!

The other crustacean that lives on the humpback whale is whale lice. These are also species-specific, but they don’t have a free swimming stage. This is interesting since it means that we can get an idea of population dynamics by looking at these lice. The transfer of lice can only occur from contact, so if you have the same genetic line of lice on you as another whale, it means that you must have rubbed against them at some point. Looking at the lice instead of having to get a tissue sample from a whale can be a much less invasive way to track interactions since biopsy sites will often get infected.

Since these critters are so small compared to the humpbacks we rely on long camera lenses to get the majority of the information about them.

Soon we left Olympus and her barnacles to their splashing, and we started the trip back to Nanaimo. We ended up making a final stop at the Gabriola Bluffs to see the huge sandstone cliffs and the Cormorants that call the cliffs home. It was a great end to an amazing trip! Please enjoy all of the photos from the day taken by the onboard Marine Naturalist Vanessa Vereschahen.

July 30, 2024, 3:30 pm - Spending some Quality Time with Olympus

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