We had barely started on our introduction to the tour when a family of River Otters caught our attention on the docks. They were having a grand old time rubbing themselves on the wooden planks, clearly having just gotten out of the ocean. They eventually moved themselves just enough for us to focus our efforts in pushing off the dock so we could get a start on searching. We headed north, hoping to spot some of the whales we had left in the morning travelling close to shore.

Along the way, our boats stopped at some of the islands by Nanoose Bay peninsula for some harbour seals. They were having a lovely time, enjoying their rocks with very little wave action from the surrounding water. Up in the trees, one of the boats found a juvenile Bald Eagle! We watched the happy seals for a few minutes before continuing on our search.

With no luck yet, one of the zodiacs Cascadia headed over from French Creek to Lasqueti Island, while the other zodiac Keta headed back down towards Nanaimo. Both of our boats stumbled across some humpbacks. Keta had Olympus (BCX2075), while Cascadia had youngsters Crackle (BCY1227) and Watson/Cerulean (KEY0043). Cascadia was also lucky enough to find Corona/Phi (BCX1416) and her 2024 calf!

Humpbacks are here to feed on the abundance of food British Columbia has. Our waters have plenty of plankton, tiny plants and animals that can make it pretty cloudy. Humpbacks really like krill, which look like little shrimp, and will also munch on small bait fish whenever they get the chance. Humpbacks are filter feeders, so they have their version of a filter, called baleen, hanging down from the roof of their mouth. Baleen is made out of a protein called keratin, and keratin is also the same protein that makes up our nails and hair! When humpbacks take in a mouthful of seawater, they close their mouth and push out water (and sometimes sand) through their baleen, but their food gets caught in it. Humpbacks eat all those small creatures, and their throat had evolved to match. It’s only about the size of an orange or ten centimetres in diameter. The biggest animal on Earth, the Blue Whale, has a throat the size of a basketball. It also eats krill and other small creatures.

Olympus was most likely focused on feeding when we got there, as she was doing circles in one spot. It was pretty shallow water compared to the rest of the Strait of Georgia, so she was doing dives between five and five and a half minutes. Meanwhile Crackle and Watson got up to some youngster chaos, pec slapping and even poking their heads out on one occasion. Phi and her calf were doing a “normal” humpback travel pattern, coming up for a few breaths before going on a dive.

While they were watching the humpbacks, Cascadia spotted some black fins in the distance and went to investigate. These were the orcas that we had originally searched for with no luck. This pod was the T002Cs:

T002C Tasu ♀ (1989)
T002C1 Rocky ♂ (2002)
T002C3 Lucy ♀ (2011)
T002C5 “Zippy” (2021)

Keta was down by Gabriola Island, and started making the trek up to Lasqueti. What’s fun is we saw humpback blows in the distance that were slowly getting closer. One moment the blows were hundreds of meters away, the next the humpbacks appeared just 20 meters away from the orcas! Transient killer whales in British Columbia have never been observed hunting a humpback whale, even though they could if they had the numbers. Instead, humpbacks like to harass orcas! And they do not discriminate between fish-eating residents or marine mammal-eating transients! Rocky also likes to taunt the humpbacks., even though he’s much smaller than them.

What’s interesting is the humpbacks moved away slowly, and neither species showed interest in each other. Wonder what went through their brains? Unfortunately, we had to start heading home, so we waited until the whales were far enough away, started our engines, and pointed to Nanaimo.

Photos from this trip were taken by Marine Naturalists Val Watson and Lucy Willis.

August 23, 2024, 3:30 pm - Humpbacks and Orca!

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