The sun was out and so were we, we had both open vessels on the water this afternoon! We started our search today in the Strait of Georgia heading north, one vessel cruised close to shore the other searched the middle of the Strait. We will usually spread out at the beginning of our search to maximize the chance of finding our whales, this afternoon was no different. We usually put a little touch of competition between our boats and challenge each other to see who finds them first! It was Cascadia who spotted the blows and in no time Keta had joined them. We could see this whale had a very white underside to their tail as they dove, the second whale we had did not give us a tail this first dive. We sometimes jokingly refer to this as a “lazy tail”. We use their tails to identify them as individuals, we have a catalogue full of photos of these tails to compare and find a positive ID on our whales. We also organize our catalogues according to the colour of the underside of the tail flukes, we use the codes X for whales that have 80% or more black colouration, Y for a blend of black and white and finally Z if their tails are 80% or more white. With that first dive, we could tell we had a Z whale, so we would start searching for our whale in that section of the catalogue. We were able to identify this beautiful lady as Anvil (BCZ0410), and we were super excited to see her as the whale bouncing alongside her was her new calf! It is not uncommon for the calves to keep their tail markings a secret, especially for the first part of their lives. This is because they have not built up the muscles that are required to lift those large tails that eventually get to around 20 feet across!

After spending time watching this mother and baby interact and roll around together doing what looked like an awful lot of cuddling, we got back into search mode. This time it was Cascadia’s captain who spotted a large splash in the distance, like a really big splash! What was it? Well of course we had to head over to check it out. It was another Humpback whale and this one was breaching, that is what our big splash was! When a Humpback whale breaches it throws around 80% of its body out of the water, this takes a lot of stamina! It takes an equivalent amount of calories for us to run a full marathon as it does for a humpback to breach! Unfortunately, neither onboard Naturalist captured a photo of this large whale having some fun in the sun. We were able to get some great photos of one of the most spectacular tails in the Salish Sea, it was Stingray (BCZ0409)! Stingray is another Z whale that is confirmed to be female, while she did not have a calf in tow this year, we have our fingers crossed for next season! Back to Nanaimo, we went taking in the sunset and stopping to see some harbour seals as well as at the Gabriola Bluffs to see the Cormorants in their nests with their chicks!

Photos taken by Marine Naturalists Vanessa Vereschahen and Hayleigh Hilbert.

August 28, 2024, 3:30 pm - A Humpday afternoon filled with Humpbacks!

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