After a successful morning tour, we were eager to get out again and see what the afternoon had in store for us. We headed off, scanning and scanning and scanning. We aimed towards the Flattop Islands, a group of islands off the eastern tip of Gabriola Island, to have a peek around them. Not too long after arriving, we saw a pair of fins surfacing - one tall, large one and one short hooked one. After snapping some photos these two were identified as T037A3 and T124C:

This pairing is quite unusual. Cooper is one of our typical mature Lone Male orca - he’s usually seen by himself, though sometimes we see him travelling along with another mature Male every once in a while. This year, his favourite travelling companion has been T087 Harbeson, another mature lone male. We saw those two together near Vancouver back in March! Spinnaker, on the other hand, has been a new addition to the Lone Whales club this year. Previously, Spinnaker stayed with his maternal pod, the T037As led by T037A Volker. It seems that he might be following his eldest sister T037A1 Inyo’s lead, deciding instead of living the typical “stay-with-mom” lifestyle, to be a more well-travelled young guy. Inyo left her mother’s side when she was roughly 10 years old and has been living the (mostly) solo lifestyle since 2017. Spinnaker stayed with his mother until he was about 12 years old. Spinnaker was still travelling with his mother and siblings until roughly December of last year, when he started to make appearances in T-parties without the rest of his pod. It’s impossible to tell yet if this will be a short-lived “vacation” or a permanent change for Spinnaker, but we are always eager to see who he will meet up with next! We hope he is enjoying himself and whatever shenanigans he is bound to get up to while away from home.

When we located the duo, it appeared that they had just finished hunting. There were a couple of tail slaps (a sign that they may be celebrating a successful meal) before they continued meandering on their way. With Cooper’s dorsal fin sitting at almost double the height of Spinnaker’s, even while they were simply travelling, this pair was quite the sight to see.

After we had observed Cooper and Spinnaker, we parted ways and started looking for more wildlife. We popped over to Stinky Rocks to visit one of our popular haulout locations. A haulout is an area where pinnipeds (fin-footed mammals such as seals and sea lions) take refuge to get out of the water and snooze. Stinky Rocks got its name from its intriguing aroma that you may get lucky to experience yourself if you join us on a trip!
Today there was a very rotund Steller sea lion sleeping away at the tip of the rocks. Weighing up to a whopping 1,120 kg. (2,500 lbs.), these big boys are the largest members of the Sea lion family in the world!
Most of our sea lions have left our area to return to their breeding grounds, but every year we have a couple of stragglers who stick around longer, and we usually even get a handful of them that stay in our area year-round. Seeing a big male around is a bit surprising, though, as they tend to head to the breeding grounds early to secure the best spots on the rocky islands to defend and woo ladies at first thing in the season.
Besides our chunky sea lion, there were also several Bald Eagles waddling around atop the kelp-covered rocks. Many of them were juveniles, which you can notice from their lack of a ‘bald’ white head. Bald Eagles don’t get their signature hairdo until roughly 5 years of age - up until that point, they are more spotty or mottled. While the tide is out, the rocky coastline is a perfect hunting ground for opportunistic scavenger species such as the eagles to scoop up any creatures that may have had the unfortunate luck of getting stuck aground as the waters lowered. From a biological standpoint, it’s much more energy efficient to find something along the shore than it is to actively hunt your meal yourself, even if it might mean your lunch is a bit smelly!

After we had our viewings of our sea lions and eagles, we headed out, pointing back towards North Nanaimo. There had been a shore report of Humpbacks in the area, and we were eager to take a peek to try and find them ourselves. After a bit of poking around, we saw a couple of blows, and suddenly a couple of mouths out of the water. Not only had we found our Humpbacks, they were lunge feeding on the surface of the water! We quickly snapped some photos of their flukes and dorsals for identification. These three were ID’d as Mow (BCY0523 calf 2023), Iota (BCX1416 calf 2022), and Specter (BCX1333 calf 2023)!
It is quite rare for us to know the age of every Humpback in an encounter, except in special cases like this, where they are a bunch of youngsters. This is because we very rarely know a whale’s true age unless we have observed them since infancy.
In the past few years, these small groups of young whales have become more and more common in our area. Travelling together while still relatively small may be a strategy to protect themselves against any orca that may decide they look like a tasty snack. Travelling together also means the whales can perform group feeding techniques, potentially helping to conserve more of their precious energy than if they were feeding by themselves, such as with the technique we observed on this trip!
Lunge feeding as a group is always a fantastic sight to behold. The whales work together to ball up groups of schooling fish, then they take turns propelling themselves forward, mouths agape, to take a big ‘bite’ out of the ball before repeating the process over again. When they do this at the surface of the water, we get a peek into the insides of their mouths.
Unlike humans and toothed whales, Humpbacks lack teeth to chew their food. Instead, they use thick, bristle-like fibres known as baleen plates to filter feed and sift food out of their big gulps of water. Baleen hangs down from the roof of the whale’s mouth like a big pair of stiff curtains. Naturalist Des was able to get many shots showing off this incredible feeding structure - check those out in the photos below!
During the whaling era, baleen was a sought-after material as it is a very strong but also surprisingly flexible material. These qualities made it perfect for items such as corsets and carriage whips - thankfully, we now have alternative materials for these products.

Once our time with the trio was up, we got cozy and began our journey back to home port. It was another amazing and fun-filled day with a little bit of everything wildlife-wise!

Please enjoy these photos taken by Marine Naturalist Desarae Poier.

May 18, 2025, 3:30 PM - Lunging around the Salish Sea!