We always say how every trip is unique, and how we never know where the whales will be. This can lead to trips where we head out without any previous knowledge of sightings in the area and we need to find whales ourselves… today, however, we got extra lucky as we caught word of a pair of orca travelling inside the Southern Gulf Islands!

We pushed off and immediately turned southbound, dashing towards the last sightings of the duo. It didn’t take too long for us to spot an iconic large black dorsal fin popping up from the depths, followed by a much smaller (but still iconic!) fin behind them.

After grabbing some photos and cross-referencing with our ID guides, this pair was identified as T049A2 Jude and T050B1 Blakeslee:

Jude has been on several interesting adventures in the past few years. In August 2023, T049A2 Jude and his then-travel buddy T051 Roswell became trapped in Barnes Lake. They were stuck in the lake for six weeks. It took playing calls on a hydrophone to coax the duo out and back into the ocean. Typically male orca are huge momma’s boys and stick by their mother’s sides their entire lives. The T049A matriline is an anomaly though, as both Jude and his older brother T049A1 Noah regularly break off to travel solo or with a friend - albeit Noah returns to his mother’s side much more often than Jude does. We even had all of Jude’s family (minus Noah) present during our tour yesterday, March 14, 2025!

T051B1 Blakeslee is also a very interesting whale. As a company, we have never seen them or their pod on any of our tours! They are so rare in our area that there have only ever been a couple of sightings of them in the Salish Sea at all! The T051B matriline usually frequent Oregon’s coastline - why little Blakeslee has decided to break off from their pod to explore the Salish Sea with Jude is a mystery.

While we were watching them, we spotted Blakeslee pinning a sea lion close to the rocks. Then the hunt began! The duo picked up speed and chased and chased - it looked like it was going to be their next meal, but we saw no indication of this hunt being successful. Typically you can tell a hunt is successful for our Bigg’s orca as gulls begin to circle and divebomb the surface of the water, grabbing any scraps they can nab before flying off. Dive times for the whales themselves usually increase as well as they divide the prey up below the surface. While this hunt may have ended with them still having hungry bellies, there’s always the next time!

Once our time with Jude and Blakeslee was up we headed out into the Strait of Georgia to look for more wildlife. We made our way over to Stinky Rocks - a couple of rocky islets grouped close together, and a favourite haulout for our pinnipeds. Our Steller sea lions were doing their usual daily routine of grumbling, growling, stretching, and sunbathing. Haulouts such as Stinky Rocks typically are ‘safe’ spots where our orca are unable to grab them. However, once the tide comes up and covers most of the rocks, this can change! It’s a never-ending battle to find that perfect comfortable-but-also-safe spot for our pinnipeds.

We of course also had to have a second stop to show all our guests the other sea lion species you can find in our area - the California sea lions! These sea lions tend to congregate inside the islands on log booms to nap instead of out on the rocks. As you can see in the photos below, they were also enjoying a good nap session this afternoon amongst the raindrops.

After adventuring around for the day we turned back towards Nanaimo and made our way back to home port after another wildly (hehe) successful day!

Please enjoy this trip’s photos taken by Marine Naturalist Vanessa Vereschahen!

March 15, 2025 - T049A2 Jude and T050B1 Blakeslee continue their adventures!

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