We design our wilderness adventures to provide you with the best whale encounters imaginable.  The coastlines of Canada’s West Coast and Vancouver Island are world-renowned for sea kayaking and whale watching. Your guides will give entertaining, informative presentations on whale natural history. They can show you how to tell one species of whale from another by the size and shape of its spout.  Trips also carry an extensive library with books on whales.

Here are the most common whales you will likely see on your tour with Sea Kayak Adventures Inc.

Orca (Killer Whale)
Orcinus orca    

July through September look for resident orcas in the waters of Johnstone Strait, Wilderness Islands and God’s Pocket Resort.  

Johnstone Strait is the best place in the world to observe wild orcas (known as killer whales for their voracious consumption of fish).  These sleek ebony and ivory mammals with their huge dorsal fins congregate here every summer to feed in on the concentrated salmon runs.  The trip highlight is viewing orcas from the comfort of a stable kayak and listening to their vocalizations from our hydrophone. Words cannot describe the excitement and beauty you’ll feel watching a powerful but gentle orca whale as its six-foot dorsal fin pierces the water’s surface. Our experienced guides will focus on maximizing your opportunities for observing orcas and sharing their knowledge of whale behavior.

• A family of orcas is known as a pod and consists of a mother and all her offspring.  Orcas stay with their mother for life and have a complex matriarchal social structure.  Males mate with females from other pods, then return to their mother.
• An adult orca can grow to 32 feet in length and weigh 9 tons.  Adult males can sport dorsal fins of up to 6 feet.  Females live up to 80 years and pass down knowledge to younger generations while the males live up to only 30 years.
• There are three distinct races of orcas – residents, transients and offshores.  Seventeen different pods of northern resident orcas, consisting of about 220 whales, inhabit the area where we kayak. An odontocete, or toothed whale, resident orcas tend to feed primarily on salmon.  Transients will feed on seals, porpoises and even large baleen whales (they killed a minke whale in Parsons bay in 2003).  There are no documented cases of killer whales attacking a human in the wild.
• Transients have higher toxin levels because they eat higher on the food chain.  Southern residents have higher toxin levels because of the higher human population in their range.
• Orcas have the ability to produce vocalization calls and whistles to communicate with each other.  They are the only animals other than humans known to have dialects in their language.  There are three clans with distinct dialects among the northern residents: the “G” clan sound like donkeys, the “R” clan sound like pigs and the “I” clan whistles.
• Resident orcas were live-captured from U.S. and Canadian waters for public display in aquarium parks until 1977.


Humpback Whale
Megaptera novaeangliae

Humpback whales are active, acrobatic whales.  They can throw themselves completely out of the water (breaching), and swim on their backs with both flippers in the air. Whaling dramatically reduced humpback numbers in the first half of the 20th century. At present they number about 6-8000 in N. Pacific (15,000 globally -- about 10 percent of historic numbers) and they have recently returned to our area. See these magnificent creatures on our Johnstone Strait, Wilderness Islands and God’s Pocket Resort trips.

• Humpback whales follow a regular migration route, summering in temperature and polar waters for feeding, and wintering in tropical waters (Hawaii and Mexico) for mating and calving.
• An adult humpback can grow to 50 feet in length and weigh 40 tons.  Like other rorquals, they have ventral pleats running from the tip of the lower jaw back to the belly area, and a small dorsal fin on their back.  Their pectoral flippers are very long, up to 1/3 the length of its body. The flukes (tail) can be 15 feet wide. The shape and color pattern on the whale’s fluke is distinctive to each whale.  It can have 45 kilos of organic matter (barnacles and whale lice) growing on its body. Series of fleshy knobs on rostrum and lower lip.
• Humpbacks are baleen whales, having no teeth, but having instead a series of fringed overlapping plates hanging from each side of the upper jaw. Baleen consists of the same material as your fingernails (keratin) and was the “whalebone” used in 19th century corsets.  The whales use the baleen to filter feed on tiny shrimp-like crustaceans (krill) and small fish.  Each whale will eat up to 3000 pounds of food a day.  Humpback whales work in groups to employ a bubble-net feeding strategy. They blow bubbles, creating a net and surrounding the prey. This “net” helps to herd the fish into a tight circle, which the whales then lunge up and into from below with their mouths agape.
• Humpbacks are famous for their singing.  Only the males sing and only in southern waters (Hawaii). They can sing for 20 minutes making different sounds.     Like all baleen whales, they have two blowholes (toothed whales have only one blowhole (the other one is covered over to use for echolocation).  Baleen whales do not use echolocation.
• Coal Harbour on the northwest side of Vancouver Island was the last whaling station in BC.  It closed in 1967 due to lack of whales and decrease in demand for whale products. Approximately 4100 Fin Whales where hunted in B.C.’s waters between 1920’s to 1960’s.
• Thick body with long, narrow, knobby edged flippers.  Coloring is black with white belly.  Underside of the flippers and flukes are usually white.  Individuals are identified by coloration and markings on their flukes.
• When diving shows flukes which have irregular hind margin.  Arches back sharply when diving, small dorsal fin rests on dorsal hump.
• Frequently leaps out of water, or slaps water with flippers.
• Blow is mushroom shaped, 10-15 feet tall.


Minke Whale
Balaenoptera acutorostrata

• Small, with a distinctly sickle-shaped dorsal fin.  Dark grey-brown sleek body and white belly.  Length is 28 feet, 8 tons (smallest baleen whale in the North Pacific).  Distinctive white band across flipper.  Light patch (chevron) between head and dorsal fin.  Head is very pointed (v-shaped), visible back is very rounded.  Dorsal fin appears simultaneously with blow.
• Low, bushy and barely visible blow.  5-8 blows one minute intervals between dives up to 20 minutes long.  Flukes are not raised when diving.
• Found in open ocean waters as well as in bays and shallow coastal areas.  Seen alone or in groups of two to three.  Prey on variety of schooling fish and zooplankton.
• Minkes are fast, with good endurance. When pursued by orcas, can swim 30 kilometers per hours in burst, averaging around 20 kilometers per hour sustained.
• Estimated 9000 in N. Pacific.  Currently hunted for meat by Japan and Norway in Antarctic waters.  


Harbour Porpoise

• B.C.’s smallest cetacean and the world’s smallest cold water cetacean.  Length is 5 feet.  Dark gray or black on back with lighter sides and white belly.  Stocky body. Dorsal fin small and triangular.
• Their blow can be distinguished by the puffing sound it makes sounding like a sneeze.  Shortest lived cetacean: 12 years maximum. 
• Commonly found in quiet backwater channels and harbors.  They never fluke and are usually solitary.  Never ride the bow wave of boats.


Dall’s Porpoise

• Found only in the North Pacific Ocean.  Open ocean and coastal waters.
• Prey upon small schooling fish and cephalopods.  
• Fastest of cetaceans: 55 km (36 miles) per hour.  Commonly ride the bow waves of boats.  Create sprays (called “rooster-tails”) of water at high speeds.  Will travel alone or in groups.
• Length 6.5 feet. No distinct beak.  Black body with white patch on sides and belly.  Stocky body with small flippers and flukes. Dorsal fin triangular.  White markings possible on dorsal fin.


Pacific White-Sided Dolphin

• Length 7.5 feet.  Stocky body with short beak.  Dark back and white belly withwhitle stripe on each side of dorsal fin extending from forehead to tail.  Tall, sickle-shaped dorsal fin is dark forward third and light trailing two-thirds.
• Gregarious.  Vigorous swimmers.  Commonly ride bow waves of boats.  Often seen leaping out of water.  May travel in large groups. Found in open ocean and inshore waters.