It was a cool cloudy day as all three of our boats pushed off the dock. With reports already rolling in, we were fairly certain we could find some whales. Before we could start the tour, we were treated to our first wildlife sighting of the day, a Great Blue Heron! Our naturalists grabbed some photos before we pushed off the dock.

Our semi-covered headed up towards Neck Point Park first. We had a shore-based report of killer whales, and of course, wanted to check it out! Within fifteen minutes of leaving the dock, we saw two black dorsal fins - we found them! Our other boats didn’t head towards the orcas at first, but they did get to hang out with these two later.

Our first task when we get on scene with killer whales is to identify them since in Canada we only watch the healthy population of Biggs/transient Orca, not the Endangered Southern Residents. We use their dorsal fins and the white patch below and behind it to identify individuals. Female transient killer whales have small, triangular dorsal fins that are pointed at the tip. Transients also have solid white or grey saddle patches. Residents have taller, more rounded fins with almost a 90-degree angle between their back and their fins. Residents can also have “open” or “finger” saddle patches. Open saddles look like a squiggly check mark, while finger saddles are solid white or grey with a “finger” of lighter coloration coming off and following the curve of the rest of the saddle patch. Residents and Transients also differ in behaviour and pod size. Transients surface slightly apart from each other and have smaller pod sizes so they can surprise their prey when they hunt. Residents have much bigger pod sizes. When foraging, they can spread out over a few kilometres, but if they’re travelling, will often surface all together.

Since there were only two whales here surfacing sporadically, we were fairly sure we had a couple of Transients. Since we have been seeing these two a lot over the past few days it was easy to quickly identify them as the T030s!

T030A Sequoia ♂ (1986)
T030C Salix ♀ (2005)

Unfortunately, T030 herself is likely deceased, and these are two of her remaining offspring. Their middle sibling T030B Lyra ♀ (1993) has her own pod and no longer travels with them. So for now, these two travel with each other. They also don’t come into our area very often, with only a handful of sightings over the past decade. We’re glad they’ve chosen to hang out for a little bit!

All of our boats also got to hang out with a few Humpback Whales today! The first humpback we saw today was Fader (BCY0195). Fader was very focused on feeding, doing long dives before coming back to the surface, so we didn’t watch him for long before trying our luck elsewhere. The next humpback we found was Olympus (BCX2075). Olympus was resting. Whales only turn half of their brain off at once when they sleep, so Olympus was still moving and fluking while we were watching her. We didn’t want to disturb her too much, and we knew a few more were hanging out in the area, so we snuck away from her and headed off. We found another sleeping whale, this time unknown to us, and Pop Tart (BCY1014) was nearby also sleeping. Maybe there was something in the water today since all the whales apparently decided it was prime sleeping time.

We left the whales to their slumbering and went to find some other wildlife. Luckily there were some seals on the rocks near Entrance Island, and a couple of boats also stopped at the Gabriola bluffs for some cormorants.

Between a double species day and multiple other animals, today was a successful day on the water! All the photos today were taken by Marine Naturalists Val Watson, Lucy Willis, and Hayleigh Hilbert.

August 16, 2024, 10:30 am - Orcas and sleepy Humpbacks

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