It was a beautiful, sunny day when Kula, our closed boat, left Nanaimo Harbour! We were thankful for the heated cabin today as the weather was quite cold, despite the sunshine! We started the search along north Nanaimo where there had been some whales reported the day before, sometimes the whales will stay in the same general area for a couple of days if there is lots of food for them, but today wasn’t one of those times. We had no luck there so we started the journey to the other side of the Strait of Georgia hoping to find something along the way.

Once we got across to the sunshine coast we stopped a the White Islets, a small island with steep white cliffs that is a haul-out site for sea lions! We also will see some harbour seals in the shallower slopes closer to the water, but the sea lions usually steal our attention! They are very loud, large, and full of personality. They are usually barking at each other, fighting for space, or being adorable as they nap. It’s one of our favourite places to stop and watch them and take photos because of the beautiful scenery on the island.

After watching the sea lions we started the whale search again, and it didn't take long before we saw a couple of blows in the distance! It looked like humpbacks! As we cautiously approached we saw the two humps rising steadily out of the water before raising their tail flukes for their dives. This makes ID very nice and easy when they are lifting their tail flukes high since this is what we use to ID them! We have a brand new catalogue from Keta Coastal Conservation with a bunch of new whales! They are a local non-profit which we work closely with, and a lot of the photos that we capture during tours not only get to be available to our guests, but we also send them in to help keep the catalogue photos up to date! This new catalogue came in handy today since these two whales weren’t in the previous version! Squirrel (KEX0066) is the whale we previously called Scorch due to the large scar on the left side of their tail fluke. The researchers at Keta thought this scar looked like a flying squirrel, hence the nickname! The other whale was a little more difficult since their fluke pattern has changed a lot over the past year. Lucky for us, we had already matched the new fluke to the name earlier in the year during our staff trip! It’s KEZ0009 Kelpie! Both these whales seem to be relatively young. We know Squirrel was born in 2020 to an Alaskan whale, but we’ve seen them in our waters for the past two years. Kelpie was first seen by us, playing with kelp right off Neck Point in Nanaimo! Back then they had a very milky white fluke pattern, commonly seen in young whales and calves. It wouldn’t be surprising if Kelpie is also an unmatched 2020 calf.

After watching these two diving for a while we headed out to find some more whales! We found another pair travelling together nearby. These two weren’t as cooperative with their tails, though. One of them was lifting their tail flukes high out of the water to dive making MMY0223 easy to ID, but the friend that they were travelling with wasn’t lifting their tail at all. We did manage to get lots of dorsal fin photos from this whale which can sometimes be used to match a whale, and it did one VERY shallow fluke which we managed to grab a photo of as well, but so far no joy in matching this whale. As per usual, if we do figure it out, we will update it in the blog!

These two were also doing lots of diving, likely more shallow since the one wasn’t lifting its tail. No matter, it was great watching these two travelling and at one point they even did a close pass of our vessel! Of course, once they started to approach we shut our engines down and floated there until the whales continued on.

After spending some time with this new set of whales our time came to an end and we started the crossing of the strait again, heading back towards Nanaimo. As we were crossing we saw something strange in the water, a log with a lump on it. We moved closer to find that lump was a harbour seal! It’s not very common to see just a single harbour seal in the middle of the Strait on a log like this so it was pretty amusing for the guests and staff onboard. Not wanting to disturb the seal we ended up leaving and continuing our crossing. We made one final stop near Nanaimo at the Harmac Pulp Mill where the log booms that are stored there usually have some more pinnipeds on them.

Today it was mostly California Sea Lions here, and they were being much lazier than the Stellers who made up the majority on the White Islets. It’s interesting to get to see both species, as there are a lot of differences between the two! Did you know that one of the easiest ways to tell what type of sea lion you’re looking at is to listen? If you hear the classic barking sound, that’s a California Sea Lion. The Steller Sea Lions sound more like their growling rather than barking. There are also visual differences which you can see in the photos below!

Overall it was a very special trip getting to see Squirrel, Kelpie, MMY0223, and our unknown. The onboard Naturalist Vanessa Vereschahen captured some beautiful moments from the tour which you can see below! If you want to join your very own winter whale-watching adventure, we still have daily departures available on our semi-covered vessel Kula at Noon!

November 9th - 4 Humpback Whales along the Sunshine Coast!