June 15, 2025, 10:30 AM - The T046B1s (and cousin) as well as an elusive little humpback!

We really, truly, never know where our whales will be from trip to trip. Sometimes they are out in the Strait of Georgia, sometimes they are inside the Southern Gulf Islands. We started our search, scanning and exploring, wondering where we would find our whales. Sometimes they can pop up in unexpected areas, and today was one of those days!

We recieved word of a potential orca sighting near Round Island, a small island just south of Dodd Narrows. We cruised over and started scanning, and soon spotted a couple little dorsals slicing through the waters! After grabbing a couple photos for identification, we were able to ID these 4 as the T046B1s and T046C2:

T046B1 Tread ♀ (2003)
T046B1A Tsakani ♀ (2015)
T046B1C Tide ♂ (2022)

T046C2 Sam ♀ (2009)

If you are familiar with orca, you might know they usually travel as a matriline, where the mother or grandmother is leading her children and potentially her grandchildren around. If you take a peek at the numbers above, you may notice that there’s one odd one out - T046C2 Sam is neither a matriarch nor one of Tread’s children. Sam is actually Tread’s cousin! While we are unsure why Sam has taken to travelling with her cousin in recent years, we are happy she has family to associate with. Sam hasn’t been travelling with her pod for a number of years now, after she ended up trapped in a remote bay. Thankfully, she was able to escape with the help of some researchers and scientists in the area. Sam has now been regularly seen travelling with the T046B1s since at least 2023, and we regularly see the 4 of them zipping through our area a couple of times a year now. Her natal pod, the T046Cs, on the other hand, are a very uncommon pod for us to see - our last sighting was way back on June 9, 2023!

These four were demonstrating the epitome of typical orca behaviour - travelling along, no clear goals in mind. These magnificent creatures can travel over 150 kilometres in a day, which is another reason we never know where they will be when we leave the dock! Tide, the youngster of the pod, was being extra adorable, popping up all over the place amongst his family members.

After watching these four travelling along for a while, we said our goodbyes and continued on our way. We headed out and into the Strait of Georgia, eyes scanning the horizon for more action. We made our way over to Stinky Rocks, a popular haulout for our pinnipeds. Here we found our lumbering Steller Sea Lions, belching and sunning themselves. Being the largest sea lion in the world, with the males weighing in at over a whopping 2,000 lbs., these guys spend a lot of the day sleeping and eating. Stinky Rocks is a perfect place to do just this, with ocean currents directing many tasty fish near the rocks, and large flat islands aplenty around to stretch out and snooze on.
Nearby, a different favourite pinniped of ours was quietly lounging around. Our Harbour Seals, a much quieter and smaller pinniped, tend to prefer the kelp-covered rocks versus the bare rocks. Today, a couple of our seals were in the water, curiously peeking at us as we drifted by. Right now we are in the middle of pupping season, so there’s always a chance at spotting a cute little baby face when we pop by here too!

As we departed our pinnipeds, we found one more surprise along the way - a tiny, elusive humpback would occasionally pop up. However, this little one was being very tricky, doing deeper dives and travelling fairly far away each surface. We tried our best, but we were unable to get a nice, ‘ID perfect’ shot. We did manage to get some photos, though, and to our surprise, we were able to confirm who they were! You’ll see from the photos below that sometimes we need to work with less-than-ideal angles for our humpback identification. Between the dorsal, peduncle ridgeline, and a few photos with his entanglement scarring visible, we were able to confirm our little elusive humpback was Ocular (BCX1705)!
Ocular is a regular in our area, and a reminder of the resilience of the Humpback species. Once on the verge of extinction due to whaling activities, the ‘Humpback Comeback’, as we have lovingly dubbed it, began in the late 90s. The humpback population in the Pacific Northwest has now bounced back in shocking numbers, with thousands of individuals now coming back to our area as well as areas north and south of us.

Soon, we had to give up the search for our little humpback and had to make our way back to Nanaimo. We made our way back, celebrating another double species day on the waters!

Please enjoy these photos taken by Marine Naturalist Desarae Poier!

T046C2 Sam.

T046C2 Sam.

T046B1 Tread with T046C2 Sam at the back, and one of T046B1C Tide in between them.

All in a row! T046B1 Tread, T046B1C Tide, and T046C2 Sam.

T046B1 Tread with her eldest daughter T046B1A Tsakani.

T046C2 Sam with her eyepatch edge visible.

T046B1 Tread - you can see the ‘tire tread’ mark visible in her saddlepatch, which is how she earned her name!

T046B1C Tide, a scarred up youngster.

T046B1A Tsakani.

T046C2 Sam.

Curious Harbour Seals peaking out of the water at us.

Nap time for our sleepy seals.

Many half asleep faces lazily watching us cruise by.

Stinky Rocks is still heavily populated, even though we are now in the breeding season!

Sunning on the rocks.

A Bald Eagle sits on top of a marker.

Ocular has a distinct dorsal notch, plus a prominent pointy peduncle top edge.

Can you see the large protrusion at the base of his flukes here?

Ocular’s ID entry in the Keta Coastal Conservation Catalogue - here you can see his dorsal notch

June 11, 2025 - Ocular diving, his intensive entangelement scarring visible (Photo by Aly Kohlman)