A Curious Humpback Calf - July 6 Trip Report
We set our sights on Weynton Passage as our first stop today and it turned out we didn’t have to go much further to see a huge variety of wildlife! On our way to Weynton, the first thing we saw was an eagle party on the rocks of the Stephenson Islets. Around 20 bald eagles were perched on the rocks. We slowly made our way closer to try to figure out what was attracting them and finally saw one very large juvenile lift a fish carcass. The eagles and a couple of crows jostled around for a position closer to the fish, but the one that had control aggressively chased them away. We watched for a little while longer while we also spotted several brand new harbour seal pups tucked in among the small islets and rocks.
From there, we spotted our first of what turned out to be many humpbacks in the area. At times we didn’t know where to look as up to 7 humpbacks were in the area. While we watched the whales we had a quick visit with some curious Dalls porpoises who came over to check us out. Then, at one point, we were waiting for Black Pearl and her new calf to resurface after diving a few hundred metres away and they gave us the huge surprise of coming up only about a metre behind the boat! The calf twisted around to look at us at the surface before they both dove and surfaced again 150 metres away. It definitely seemed like the calf wanted to check us out before mom encouraged him or her to move further away. After watching the whales in Weynton for a while longer, we moved the boat closer to Donagal Head on Malcolm Island where we watched Guardian surfacing and fluking. While we were watching him, the guests on the back spotted a whale tail lobbing and breaching behind us and everyone had a hard time figuring out which direction to look!
Eventually we left the humpbacks and stopped briefly to watch a Stellers sea lion thrashing a spiny dogfish at the surface before finding a few small rafts of sea otters in Cormorant Channel. Everyone was charmed at they floated on their backs grooming themselves and occasionally having a bit of a wrestle with each other.
By then it was time to head back. It started raining just as we pulled into Alder Bay – someone on the boat must have been good luck as the we watched the forecasted rain making its way down Vancouver Island for most of the afternoon while we enjoyed the sun and calm water.