Alaska Boys in the Saanich Inlet
May 28, 2025
T125A Jetsam
Jetsam and land based admirers
Jetsam, Flotsam, and onlookers from shore! The best and only sustainable kind of whale watching!
Flotsam and Jetsam
On May 28, 2025 after conducting pinniped surveys in the Saanich Inlet, our team got notification of whale watching vessels heading south into the Inlet from Cowichan Bay. We notified our cousins collecting water quality samples off Malahat, and waited for the whales. These two were easy to distinguish, two large males known in our area as the Alaska Boys or Alaska Brothers, as they spend most of their time in Alaska. These two are believed to be brothers, but they don’t share alphanumerics, they are Flotsam and Jetsam, T128 and T125A.
On this day, we deployed our dip hydrophone in hopes of hearing the boys communicating, but were overwhelmed with the sound of vessel noise instead. As the boys passed Mill Bay Marina we notified a recreational vessel of their presence, and they stopped to let the whales pass.
Seeing cetaceans so close to home in the Saanich Inlet is always a special experience. We hope the whales continue to seek prey and refuge in the Inlet and encourage land based sightings from our communities.
All photos are taken with a 200-600 zoom lens.