June 15, 2024: T Party & Humpbacks | Gulf Islands
Date: June 15, 2024
Location: Gulf Islands & Strait of Georgia
Weather: Sunny with scattered clouds, 15 C, winds 13 MPH E
Tide: Flood
Pods/Individuals: T123s, T086A3s, T071B1, T071B2, BCX1705, BCX1773, BCZ0432, BCX1606, BCX2075, BCX1660, BCX1416, BCX0837
Total whale count: 16
Behaviors: Traveling and feeding
Boat Count: 3
Observer: Kendra Nelson
Photo by Kendra Nelson
Sailing out of Nanaimo with Vancouver Island Whale Watch, we immediately began searching for killer whales seen on earlier tours in the day. As we sailed out of Nanaimo Harbour, we started going north in the Strait of Georgia. Everyone was scanning the water on both sides of the boat, hoping we could spot some black dorsal fins and I was able to spot them out in the Strait of Georgia! They were the T123s with T086A3 “Tyndall” and her calf T086A3A, as well as T071B1 “Zengo” and T071B2 “Tasli / Nemo.”
The orcas were traveling north and we stuck around with them for about 30 minutes. I absolutely loved seeing T086A3 and her calf again! They are starting to be some of my favorite whales in the transient population.
After leaving the killer whales, we quickly found ourselves surrounded by humpback whales. We were in humpback soup, confirming the IDs for 8 humpbacks over the next 1.5 hours throughout the Strait of Georgia as we made our way down to Valdes Island. One humpback we watched was BCX1705 “Ocular”, who stands out due to deep scarring around his fluke from entanglement. Ocular also has a Hawai’i ID of HW-MN0510509. In some images of BCX1705’s back and fluke, you can see the pink/orange whale lice!
Many of the humpbacks we watched were feeding and others were traveling. On all sides of the boat there were humpbacks to see! In between humpback dives, we watched jellyfish float by and even saw Japanese wireweed (Sargassum muticum), which is an invasive algae introduced to the Salish Sea in the 1900s.
We headed over to Sea Lion Rock off of Valdes Island to finish the afternoon. As usual there were lots of steller sea lions and harbour seals. One male steller sea lion that was thin and injured hauled out further away from the rest of the sea lions. Naturalist Aly speculates that his injuries may have some from other male sea lions as we continued to watch the rest of the sea lions and two large males were boisterous and almost fought.
Read Vancouver Island Whale Watch’s sighting report from these encounters as well! Thank you so much to VIWW for the wonderful day on the water.
