ḰENES and KELȽOLEMEĆEN

May 05, 2025

T124A7 and T124A

members of T124As

members of T124As

To be a killer whale in the Salish Sea is to be surrounded by vessels, masking your communication with your family, impacting your ability to effectively forage and navigate. T100Bs

members of T124As

Divot

On May 05, 2025 our team hit the water with a member of Ruth Joy’s lab at SFU’s Environmental Science Department. We travelled to East Point, Saturna Island where we saw two Humpbacks, one ID’d as Divot, and the other believed to be Graphite. We watched as Divot travelled North into the Strait of Georgia, and the other whale remained in the Boundary Pass area. These whales were without whale watching vessels, however we raised our whale flag and re-routed one recreational vessel that was travelling at high speed in the direction of the whales.

After a lunch break at East Point, we headed back into Boundary Pass and were confronted with a swarm of whale watching vessels on a group of killer whales, members of the T100Bs, T124As, and T100E. We stayed with this group to monitor the 11 vessels that were watching the whales. We felt heavy thinking of the acoustic and physical disturbance they were experiencing. During this encounter, we witnessed 4 avoidance distance regulation violations of whale watchers getting too close to our relatives.

All photos are taken with a 200-600 zoom lens.