Tag Archives: Whale Watching

…breaching whales. Just because there are more whales breaching does not mean that there are more photos of whales breaching. It is still one of the most difficult pictures to obtain and until they start giving warning of a breach it will remain difficult.

Humpback whale lunge feeding on a school of herring. As the years pass more and more humpback whales are remaining all summer in our viewing area. Ten years ago it was one or maybe two now a dozen whales on a whale watching trip is the norm. More whales increase the opportunity for photos of lunge feeding and…

They were not paying attention because there were two humpback whales of the stern. And one was closer than the one from the front but I missed the tail again. I did get the photo I wanted one that shows a guest getting a close up of the whale activity we frequently experience on your marine wildlife trips. It in not uncommon to see a dozen or more humpbacks on a day trip from Grizzly Bear Lodge and when we stop for lunch and drift in an area where the whales are feeding it can get very interesting.

The left edge of the photo is a guest trying to get a good picture of a humpback whale, on a tour, that surfaced close to our boat. When the whales are feeding in our area on the BC coast the best action is no action. That means find a herring ball and sit and wait, running after the whales just creates to much disturbance and they tend to move off to another area. We have a number of humpback whales that summer in our viewing area so the problem is often to “guess” which side of the boat will provide the beat picture. I can think of worse problems.

Humpback whales are identified by the underside and trailing edge of their tail flukes; each one is different just like a fingerprint. In British Columbia humpbacks are given a letter as part of their identification to categorize their fluke based on color. X animals have mostly black tails with less than 20% white on their fluke, Y animals have a fluke that is 20-60% white, while Z animals have more than 60% of their fluke white. Humpback whales often show these tails, or ‘fluke’ while diving, making them ideal candidates for photo-identification projects. This photo is of a humpback that we frequently see on our whale watching tours, it is called ‘Guardian’.

Little easier to tell that it is a humpback whale lunge feeding on a herring ball. Over the years it has become a much more common sight on the British Columbia coast as we frequently encounter a dozen or more whales on a day tour compared to one or two on a good day ten years ago. Still have a hard time convening my guests to ignore the humpbacks when there is a report of killer whales in the area. Saying “don’t worry they will be there when we return” does not seem to satisfy the need for photos.

On this day’s whale watching safari it is hard to tell from this photo what is happening. It is a marine mammal of some kind doing something. It is all a matter of perspective or the guides positioning of the boat maybe even the fault of the mammal for not considering the location of the boat. Clearer photo in tomorrow’s post…