This past summer more of the humpback whales viewed were doing a vertical lunge. The whale would come up slowly with its mouth wide open and often remain as shown in this photo and slowly rotate in a circle for up to a minute. It would then slowly close its mouth, hopefully full of herring, and sink below the surface. It must have worked because it was viewed often over the summer.
Lunge feeding humpback whales are common on the whale watching trips that leave Grizzly Bear Lodge most days. This sideways lunge will on occasion catch more that herring. After the lunge the whale sinks and forces the water out through the baleen leaving the herring trapped and to be swallowed. Sometime a duck or seagull will exploded several a meter (yard) or two out of the water in to the air having escaped becoming whale food. Those that escape seem to be little worse for wear and continue to feed.
The post from yesterday with the seine boat netting salmon is in direct competition with today’s killer whales fishing. I have found over the years that during the commercial fishing season, which is not much, more that two weeks the orca stay away from the areas containing the fishing boats. Fortunately the commercial fishing area is a small portion of the viewing area for orca and humpback whales. In a way it is helpful in that it eliminates some area from our search grid and helps to locate the humpbacks and killer whales a little faster.
While parked within photo range of a herring ball it is important to remember that humpback whales have and excellent sense of their environment. They will surface close to the boat but they are aware that you are in the area. The other important point is not to be moving while you are waiting or the whales will not know your position. In this case the whale was close enough that it was impossible to focus the camera and those with long lenses were lost. The June 5th posting is a much better distance.
Feeding seagulls are important to guides on whale watching tours. The feeding gulls signal that there is a herring ball near the surface. The herring ball up as a defense to the diving ducks that feed on the herring. This ball rotates to the surface and attracts the gulls, which in turn attracts your guide to park the boat in the area and to wait for the humpback whales that feed on the herring… more tomorrow
Every day on the whale watching safari trips that leave Grizzly Bear Lodge is different. On the day of this picture we were sitting several hundred meters (yards) off shore as a pod of orca were passing. The whale watching guidelines specify that you are to be two hundred meters from the shore if whales are in shore of your boat or one hundred meters in open water. The regulations are in force by an organization known as Strait Watch and on this day they were less than seventy-five meters behind our boat. One of the whales in the pod turned from the shore and surfaced beside our boat, swam around the boat and then under the boat and resurfaced on the other side. Strait Watch came over after the orca had moved on and were interested in our pictures, they thought that the orca was fishing under the boat and became curious as dolphins are by nature interested in their surroundings. The reason is not as important as the great pictures.
The first thing to note is the white boat antenna in the left corner of the photo. A telephoto lens was not required to get this close up. More than a dozen different humpback whales are found in our whale watching area on a daily basis. The whale safari travel about an hour from the lodge to an area close to British Columbia’s Vancouver Island and area rich in herring the many food of humpbacks. Our picnic lunches are most often eaten in the boast while we drift among feeding whales. It is sort of like the movie “Field of Dreams” but in this case if one waits quietly (boat motor off) the whales come to visit.
All photographs of breaching humpback whales are a result of a certain amount of LUCK. For the past several years the whale watching days from Grizzly Bear Lodge has the guest viewing between ten and sixteen whales each tour. This means good photo of humpbacks tail lobbing, lunge feeding and surfacing close to the boats however the unpredictable nature of a breach means pictures are rarer. This breach from the head on perspective is very unusual.
France, showing a humpback whale fluking, which is when the whale raises its tail out of the water and descends beneath the surface. The under side of the tail is used to identify different whales by it’s shape, bumps on leading and trailing edge, the black and white pigment pattern and any scars. There are many websites dedicated to humpback whale identification and some that provide the Photographic Catalogue of Humpback Whales in British Columbia.
Humpbacks show great fidelity to their feeding areas and British Columbia is split into two separate regions. The southeast Alaska/northern British Columbia region is estimated to have a population of 3,000-5,000 whales, while the southern BC/Washington population is approximately 200-400 whales. There also appears to be a correlation between feeding and breeding grounds. The majority of humpback whales feeding in northern BC appear to be wintering in Hawaii. The southern BC whales have animals that have been re-sighted off mainland Mexico, as well as Hawaii.
Pacific white-sided dolphins are becoming more common in the waters between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. These dolphins are frequently seen on the grizzly bear tour and the extra day trip to Trapper Rick’s as they are on a whale watching safari. Often pods of several hundred dolphins will approach the boat and bow ride or come right up to the prop wash at the stern of the boat. Great Britain’s James O’Donoghue photo shows a few members of a larger pod approaching the rear of their boat having just departed mine.
Just like that our season has come to an end. I would like to thank all of our wonderful guests and staff who made this year a huge success. I am happy to stay that all of our team is planning to return next season. We are actively taking bookings, with dates starting June 1 2025. Hope to see many of you next season.
The wildlife viewing this season was awesome. A couple highlights that come to mind was the shear number of salmon in our local rivers, as well as the abundance of Resident Orca. With salmon returns being so strong this year, we were happy to see bears in excellent condition. By the end of our season most of the bears had packed on a lot of weight and were getting very “picky” about what parts of the salmon they would eat. Hopefully this will translate into more cubs being born this winter. Another positive was the weather conditions. We had enough rain to keep our fire risks low and it made for some excellent wild berries. The bears took full advantage of this, with the berry season extending far past its normal conclusion. This did mean that we had to work hard to find bears during our summer season, (as they were often feeding on the berries deep into the forest), but moving forward it is excellent that they had such an abundant food supply. The Humpbacks also didn’t disappoint, with great numbers and a few new calves returning with their mothers to feed. After a slower year for resident Orca sightings, this season was one of the best that I can remember. In fact as Im writing this the A62 and A23’s are still being spotted in the area by dedicated biologists. Strong numbers of Chinook and Chum salmon are providing them with a steady food source. There are a lot of positive signs and we are hopeful that 2025 will be another great season.
Over the winter and spring we will be doing some repairs and maintenance. We plan on having a new cedar front deck built in time for the 2025 season, as well as new ceilings and paint in parts of the lodge and rooms. Theres always projects on the go.
Felix, Julien, Ryan, Zack and Myself all look forward to welcoming guest in June. See everyone soon.
Angus Reid
Visit our Blog