Black-legged kittiwakes (L, seen with a short-billed gull) spend most of the year in the open ocean and are rarely seen in the Salish Sea. It was one of 71 bird species seen on this Specialty Birdwatching Tour.
Liam Ragan / Rocky Point Bird Observatory
#Wild4Whales

This is a northern fur seal, a rare visitor to this region, and it’s demonstrating the “teapot” pose—the distinctive position that fur seals use to rest in the open sea!
Ryleigh Whitfield Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales

A humpback whale can hold up to 18,000 litres of water and food in its mouth in one gulp, thanks to expandable throat pleats. That’s enough to fill 360 bathtubs!
Chrystelle Côté Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales

A harbour seal takes refuge in a mass of floating kelp as a hungry T046B1A swims by. Unfortunately for the seal, the kelp sanctuary did not work out very well.
Ryleigh Whitfield Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #TopPredator

A humpback finishes off a feeding lunge, with water being squeezed through the baleen and out of the mouth. Trapped inside the baleen are the hundreds of small herring that the whale was after!
Shorelines Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#WIld4Whales

An unlucky Steller sea lion goes flying as he’s rammed by T030B and family in Haro Strait.
@tomflip.bsky.social
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #TopPredator #KillerWhale

Neilson (T049C) interrupts our birdwatching tour with this spectacular breach—one of six in a row!
Chrystelle Côté Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #TopPredator #Orca

A young humpback whale does a half-breach, half chin slap. If you look carefully you can see the whale’s eye near where the mouthline turns downwards!
Chrystelle Côté Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales

Harbour seals tend to avoid being too close to their boisterous and much larger Steller sea lion cousins, but not this one! It’s a bold move considering harbour seals weigh a mere 80 kg while Stellers can weigh 13 times as much!
Shorelines Photography
#Wild4Whales

A humpback swims away from us giving us a great view of its double blowhole (essentially modified nostrils). All baleen whales have two blowholes, while toothed whales have only one blowhole! #NowYouKnow!
Shorelines Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales

Humpbacks Victory (BCZ0345, F) and Merlin (BCY1033, M) scoop up fish by the hundreds. It's the time of year when a male’s thoughts turn to things other than food. In recent years we’ve been seeing some pre-courtship behaviour before they head south!
Chrystelle Côté Photography
#Wild4Whales

A common murre frantically flaps out of the way as Lynx (T060E) surfaces. Lynx and his brother are well-known for chasing murres and other seabirds for sport!
Chrystelle Côté Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #ExploreBC #TopPredator

A humpback pectoral flipper seems to glow in the foggy light. Fun fact: these flippers, which can reach 4.5-metres or one-third of the whale’s body length, are the largest appendages in the animal kingdom!
Carol Limido Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales

When humpbacks begin a dive, usually one of them goes first and the other follows. But every now and then, they both fluke up at the same time—like this! This is BCX2325 (left) and Cinder (BCX1749).
Chrystelle Côté Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #FlukesUp

27yo Neilson (T049C) is what we call a lone male. His mother died years ago and even though he has two surviving sisters, he’s chosen a solitary life. We rarely see him mixing with other Bigg’s families.
@salishseaphotos.bsky.social
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales

Fall in the southern Salish Sea is the annual turkey vulture migration. In late September and early October, hundreds (thousands?) gather into kettles—swirling vortices of birds—to get the lift they need to glide across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
@salishseaphotos.bsky.social
#Wild4Whales #TUVU

The T060 brothers travel along San Juan Channel, always on the prowl for a quick meal. Onca (T060D, left), and Lynx (T060E) have been touring the southern Salish Sea for the past few weeks!
Chrystelle Côté Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #ExploreBC #Orca

What seconds before had been a large baitball of small schooling fish—probably herring—disappeared in one large gulp thanks to a hungry juvenile humpback.
Shorelines Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #ExploreBC #SalishSea #FeedingFrenzy

3yo Tide (T046B1C) breaches as his family socializes in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Tide’s older brother was Tl’uk, who was famous for his pale-coloured skin. Tl’uk died in 2021 at the age of 3.
Chrystelle Côté Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #Spyhop

Merlin (BCY1033) does his version of the twist as he breaches in Becher Bay, west of Victoria.
Carol Limido Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #Breach

An excited Holly (T099B) “porpoises” through the water during a seal hunt.
<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vtxnz36k5oxivytc2nvbcycw" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@tomflip.bsky.social
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #ExploreBC #TopPredator

From a distance this male elephant seal looked like a a deadhead log…until we saw the eyes, whiskers and that namesake schnozz! Elephant seals spend most of their lives at sea and will rest vertically at the surface like this between dives.
Sam Stutz Photography
#Wild4Whales

Imagine our surprise when this young humpback finished a lunge, then opened its mouth to reveal this struggling bird! Humpbacks can’t swallow something this large, so the only option was to expel the unwanted bird—which did manage to get out!
Carol Limido Photography
#Wild4whales

The T099 and T036A1 families charge off to new adventures after spending the day with a third family. The whale leading this charge, matriarch Bella (T099), is the auntie of the T036A1s!
<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vtxnz36k5oxivytc2nvbcycw" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@tomflip.bsky.social
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #TopPredator

“Pssst, want to see my imitation of a banana?”
Shorelines Photography
Photo taken with a telephoto lens and cropped.
#Wild4Whales #HarbourSeal #BananaForScale