Orca babies and Humpbacks!

Spring Orca Babies!

Wow, it’s hard to believe that June is here already! We have had an amazing spring season with a variety of whales making appearance in the Salish Sea. We have had two of our resident pods, J Pod and L Pod back in our waters with four healthy babies. We have also had some amazing encounters with Humpback whales this spring. As well, there have been sightings of Minke and Grey whales. We couldn’t ask for a better spring.

Humpbacks

Our sighting of Humpback whales seems to be increasing every year as their population continues to grow again. Humpback whales are one of the largest whales that frequent our waters. They weigh in at around 15 meters long and 40 tonnes. Most humpback whales spend the summer in cool waters and winters in warmer tropical waters. The summers are spent feeding and winters are spent mating and calving.

Traveling from the frigid waters of Alaska to the tropical seas off Hawaii, Humpback Whales migrate through Canadian waters twice a year. Humpbacks use BC waters mainly as feeding grounds.

These whales are slow swimmers, making them easy targets for whalers in the first half of the 20th century, when they were killed by the thousands for their blubber. Now protected, Humpback populations have grown to nearly 54,000 worldwide— over 45 percent of their original numbers. The many years of whale hunting put Humpback whales on the endangered list. With recent conservation efforts they have been taken off the endangered list and are now listed as a threatened species.

Summer Ahead

We are looking forward to the upcoming summer and the return of all our resident Orcas. We also can’t wait to see all four babies continue to thrive in the Salish Sea.