The sun was shining, and the waters were beautifully still as we began exploring during our evening tour. Our exploration was short-lived, though, as there were orca in the Northumberland Channel, a mere 15 minutes off our dock! It’s not every day you get whales as truly ‘in our backyard’ as this encounter, so today was extra special!

We quickly got to work, pulling out our cameras and snapping photos of the two large dorsal fins ahead of us. We confirmed that these two were the T060 brothers, Onca and Lynx:

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

These two brothers are an interesting pair to encounter, as they are not very regularly seen in our area, but they do appear to be coming around cyclically. They have been making appearances in early September most years (though August 28th is a bit early compared to other years), with our first sighting of them as a company being September 30, 2021. They also appeared last year on September 4, 2024, and September 8, 2024.

Onca and Lynx were meandering on along as we watched them, zigging and zagging through the channel. This is very typical orca behaviour, as they can go great distances in a single day. With a huge active range covering the waters of Alaska all the way down to California, you never know where these speedy whales will go. Sometimes we will see orca in our area one day, and then get word of them south of Victoria the very next day!

Interestingly, orca males are typically huge “momma’s boys” and rarely leave their mother’s side. However, Onca and Lynx have been travelling as bachelors away from their natal matriline for a shocking 6 years. They dispersed back in 2019 when their youngest sibling, T060G Uncia, was born. It is possible their mother, T060 Pantera, needed the pod to be smaller for her to support them, as having five hungry mouths to feed would lead to a lot of hunting every day. Onca is likely full-grown at this point, at 21 years old, and he is a relatively small male. From a genetics and survival perspective, their mother, T060 Pantera, may also need to focus her energy on bolstering her eldest son, T060C Yelnats, who, as the eldest, is likely the main way her family line is currently continuing to grow.

Once we wrapped up our time with the brothers, we departed scene and began venturing out into the Strait of Georgia. Our next goal was to find a humpback whale, the other kind of whale we can typically find in our area. Luck was on our side today, as we saw a blow just north of Gabriola Island!

While we usually use dorsal fins to identify different orca, dorsals tend to be a bit trickier to use for ID’ing humpbacks. The most typical way to identify them is by examining the underside of their flukes. The underside, decorated with a combination of unique pigmentations, scars, scrapes, and notches, is highly unique to each individual. We compare this fluke to our catalogues (such as the Keta Coastal Conservation Catalogue) to confirm their identities.

This little whale was identified as Malachite (BCY1465), the 2021 calf of Slate (BCX1210). At four years old, Malachite is still reasonably young, but it is possible he may be starting to breed. In 2023, thanks to Happywhale, Malachite was successfully cross-matched to the Mexico breeding grounds. This was a significant discovery, as Slate, as well as Malachite’s older brother, Graphite, have not yet had confirmed breeding ground sightings. Humpbacks show a strong site fidelity to their breeding and feeding grounds, meaning they are very likely to return to the areas their mothers initially taught them about during their first year of life. This means it is likely that Slate taught her two sons how to travel to Mexico and then how to return to our area for the summer, to feast on our bountiful seas full of krill and small schooling fish.

After departing Malachite, we started angling back towards Nanaimo, ending a very successful double species day very close to our own home port!

Please enjoy these photos by Marine Naturalists Vanessa Vereschahen and Jordan Robinson.