Ashley
-
Bubble Net Feeding in the Salish Sea – 30/8/25
I think the thing that stood out to me the most was that humpback bubble feeding here. And it’s a young whale, BCY0505 “Dolphin”, I want to say it’s mom is BCX1480 “Spotlight”. Dolphin is not very old. I want to say it’s maybe a 2022 calf where did it learn this? And like in one day, not only was it bubble net feeding by itself, but it was doing that, like, krill skim feeding in the morning with BCY0994 “Dalmatian”. So clearly it’s a very versatile animal. And so for this young animal to be so well versed in various feeding mechanisms, that’s very intriguing to me. So, that might be the coolest. Well, not, you know, I mean, there are so many cool stories this summer. It’s hard to choose just one. But I think that that’s a real standout one. I got way too excited when it was happening and I was like, oh, I’m gonna contain this and it was really funny because I was very vocally excited and I was like, oh, I should contain myself. And then I had a passenger going, no, no, no, please don’t contain yourself. This is great. And I’m like, okay. It was just so cool and it wasn’t a one off. This animal did multiple bubble net scenarios. It was like that’s something we expect to the north, but not here. I’ve seen Prowler do sort of like a half circle of bubbles, like testing out this method, but I’ve never seen like the full bubble net circle where the ring gets tighter and tighter. It was really cool. -Ashley This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 86 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here
-
A Day of Humpbacks – 7/8/23
Today I was captaining with Andy Scheffler as my naturalist and we got to see BCX1057 “Divot and BCY0458 “Raptor” hanging out, then we decided to adventure up to Halibut Bank to see who else we might find only to discover a red-necked phalarope. We also hung out with some Harbour Porpoise and we then…
-
Epic Porpoise Hunt with T019 & T019B – 11/8/23
For those of you who spend time out on the water with whales and other wildlife, have you ever been out and had an exceptional few minutes and gone through your photos while on the boat and even when you get back to shore to see all the incredible moments you were able to capture,…
-
A Visit with Zig Zag and Her Calf – 29/9/23
Today I got to hang out with two wonderful humpback whales, BCX1193 “Zig Zag” and her calf. The seas were fairly big, which made some moments with these huge animals seem like they weren’t even there, only their exhales marking their presence, as they surfaced between the waves in the troughs and not the crests.…
-
Singing Humpbacks – 2/22
So I headed to Silver Bank to go snorkeling with Humpback Whales. And on one particular day, the conditions were absolutely glassy, glassy, glassy, calm seas. And we headed out, we were searching for whales. And we were having a tough time finding some doing lots of searching and at one point, the guide, through…