Whale watchers were delighted to see a large fin whale swimming off the waters of Shirley, B.C., last week – marking a rare sighting of the second largest whale in local waters.
Mollie Cameron, a skipper with Sooke Coastal Explorations, says her tour spotted the fin whale on the morning of Sunday, June 28.
“Yeah, the first sighting of it was just really incredible,” she told CHEK News on Friday.
“You kind of only see the back of it, but still knowing that it’s a different species – and then to see how large it was – when it first surfaced you could see kind of the blow hole and then how long it actually took to get to the dorsal fin, it just showed the incredible size of that animal,” she said.
A video of the whale is shown below, courtesy of Sooke Coastal Explorations:
Fin whales are the second-largest whale species on earth, second only to the blue whale, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
They grow to an average size of 20 to 27 metres long (66 to 89 feet) and weigh 60 to 80 tonnes, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada. They can also live up to 100 years.
The fin whale spotted this weekend is estimated to be 21 metres, or 70 feet, according to Eagle Wing Tours.
Cameron credits Eagle Wing with being the first ones to spot the fin whale, and let her team know the approximate location of where it was.
“This was an impossibly rare sighting and we were so, so lucky,” Eagle Wing Tours Naturalist Molly Hackett said.
‘Really exciting day’
Cameron says this is the first time she’s ever seen a fin whale in B.C., after working on the water for the past decade.
“I know they’ve been documented in the Salish Sea before but it was certainly a first for our team and it was just a really exciting day,” she said.
Cameron says she normally tells her tour guests that it’s common to see humpbacks or orcas in the area, and rare to see grey whales and minke whales near Vancouver Island.
“So if we do encounter them you should all leave and go buy a lottery ticket because you were all really lucky,” she said.
“So I knew where the fin whale was and when we got up to the animal I said to all my guests, ‘You know you really need to buy a lottery ticket today because this is kind of a first for even us.’”
Cameron says fin whales have only been seen a handful of times in B.C. over the past 10 years at sporadic intervals.
Hackett says this is likely due previous hunts, which massively reduced the population.
“It’s only since 2015 that we’ve started to see them coming back,” she said. “This is actually only the sixth one that’s been recorded back in the Salish Sea.”
Cameron thinks one reason why the fin whale was here may be because of food, with the species feeding primarily on krill and small school fish like herring.
“We assume there’s quite a bit of food, even with the amount of humpbacks we’ve been seeing this year and previous years, but the Salish Sea seems to be a pretty nutrient-dense area for these animals,” she said.
“So hopefully that’ll encourage more species to visit over time.”
Hackett adds the fin whale that was spotted was healthy looking and possibly a “younger individual looking to explore some new feeding grounds.”
Fin whales eat up to two tons of food a day, according to NOAA. The animal is considered endangered by NOAA, and as a species of “special concern” in Canada.
SEE ALSO: