It’s not every day that we end up lucky enough to spot both species of whale nice and close to our home port, but today was that kind of day! Every trip, we start fresh, since our whales don’t have any long-term tagging. Most of the population tracking for the local populations of whales comes from photo-identification, and a lot from whale watching companies like us! Each time we see a whale, we record all sorts of information like coordinates, individuals present, and behaviours and at the end of the year, this information will be shared with all sorts of researchers who work with the local whales. It makes sense that, since whale watchers are always looking for the animals and finding them most of the time, you would want to have that data going somewhere important.

It didn’t take us long to find our first group of whales. We spotted the blows close to Snake Island, only about 20 minutes from the dock! It turned out to be a pair of humpback whales that were travelling together: Orion (BCX1251) and a new to us whale, BCX2316. These two were travelling quite close together with their behaviours synchronized, something called associating. These associations between individuals are a relatively new phenomenon, as it wasn’t too long ago that their numbers were so low that they were thought to be more solitary creatures. Now, it’s much less common to see a single individual compared to even ten years ago. If you go back even further, a few decades, seeing the humpbacks at all would be a rare sight, as they were extirpated from the area. Their numbers were so low that when one of the first ones was respotted in the Salish Sea, there was quite the celebration! Things have only gotten better since then, with the population steadily increasing over time. Although this is all good news, there is still a long way to go until they return to historic numbers. It’s thought that thousands of humpback whales were taken from the area, so we should continue to see their numbers rise as the years pass. The humpback returns to BC to feed, taking advantage of our nutrient-rich waters and the high biodiversity and biomass that we support. They hunt tiny creatures, like planktonic krill and small schooling fish, via filter feeding. Instead of teeth, they have about 400 plates of Baleen that hang from the roof of their mouth. The dense plates allow them to push the water out of their mouth, while catching any of the desired food while they do so. It seemed this was exactly what Orion and BCX2316 were up to, and we got some great looks at them while they spent their time feeding.

While watching these two, one of our boats spotted something in the distance: it was the tall black dorsal fins of some orca! They headed over to check it out, and quickly figured out it was the T060 brothers travelling together:

T060D Onca ♂ (2004)
T060E Lynx ♂ (2008)

These two are a slightly rare sight around here, although they tend to appear for a few days once or twice a year. They are typically found further north, closer to Telegraph Cove and other northern Vancouver Island communities. Seeing them is quite interesting, since they have a slightly unusual social dynamic. Usually, male orca will stick with their mom and her pod for their entire lives, but these two have a mother who is very much alive, travelling with some of their siblings, but they choose to be off on their own. This happens quite often with the younger males of a group, since their mom will focus a lot of her attention on the oldest, largest individual in the group. We theorize that this is why they left together: they weren’t getting the attention needed from mom, so they left on their own. There would also be some advantages to this lifestyle, as there would still be help with hunting, but fewer mouths to share it with when successful.

We watched just the two of them travelling together for a while, and then they joined up with another pair of orca that had apparently been travelling north close to shore. It was a rather famous pair in the area:

T065 Whidbey II ♀ (~1971)
T063 Chainsaw ♂ (~1978)

The four met up, but our time with them was running out since we would only spend an hour with any group of whales to reduce the impact that we have on them. Yet again, while we were watching these whales, something else caught our attention in the distance. It was more humpback whales! Two of our boats spotted an active pair of whales that kept making splashes at the surface, jumping out of the water and slapping their tail on the water. We spent some time watching these two until we noticed something about one of them. There seemed to be some deep cuts along the whale’s peduncle, or base of their tail. This allowed us to obtain an ID for this little whale: Starry Knight (BCX0915calf2024), who was travelling with their sibling Portrait (BCY1223). Within the last two months, this young whale has been found entangled in prawn gear twice and was successfully disentangled twice as well. Since this whale is recovering from these very traumatic events, we have been trying to avoid watching them, so once we figured out who it was, we left them behind. Now you might be asking yourself, if they are so injured, isn’t it a good sign that they were so active at the surface? And yes, it is a good sign for mobility that Starry Knight was so full of energy, but there are also some downsides to this behaviour. First of all, the amount of energy this whale spends jumping and playing around is very significant. During a time that they are trying to build a reserve of fat to sustain them during migration, the prolonged occurrence of these behaviours might be harmful. Considering that when they were entangled, they wouldn’t have had much, if any, opportunities to feed their reserves, they are likely already low. So then why are they jumping? Well, when in a weakened state, there is often a large congregation of whale lice that will gather on a whale. It can be good for healing wounds since they would be feeding on the flesh that might be damaged and ready to fall off, helping to prevent infection, but when they start to move outside these areas, they can be pretty itchy. Healing wounds in general are also quite itchy, so they are likely jumping to get some relief from the lice and the itchiness they create. We do hope that Starry Knight survives and continues to be seen in our waters, and whales have survived injuries like this before, but only time will tell for this young whale.

While the two boats watched these two, the other found a humpback of its own, known as Nike (BCX1377). Nike was also splashing about at the surface, slapping his tail against the water's surface, which caught this boat’s attention. After his acrobatics, he ended up resting, apparently tired out by his tail slapping antics. During this rest, he seemed to drift towards our vessel, leading to a couple of close-up looks before he eventually woke up and moved away from us again. This led to a very interesting shot that showcases the lice that likely would have also been congregating on Starry Knight’s wounds as well. Seeing them here on Nike is no need for concern, though, as they are naturally found in smaller numbers on most humpback whales. They enjoyed their time watching Nike for a while before eventually needing to leave him behind as well.

All three boats returned to the harbour very happy with all of the wildlife that they got to witness today! Throughout the tour, the onboard Marine Naturalists Vanessa Vereschahen, Aly Kohlman, and Hayleigh Hilbert captured some great photos, which are available below!

August 28, 2025, 10:30 AM - Double species close to home!