Orcas and Calves in the Hotspot – 25/1/25

On our journey out to the hotspot, we came across a few common dolphins leaping up out of the water! They zoomed along and came in to ride our wake zipping around. At a max speed these guys can reach up to 60km an hour, making them one of the fastest mammals in the world! It’s always a great start to the day when we are joined by dolphins right off the bat!

The good luck continued, and we once again had orca as soon as we reached the hotspot. We spotted the familiar dorsal fin of Cookie with her cookie shaped chunk missing, and she was followed by her entourage including Oreo, Kalimna, Spock, Swirl and big mature male El Notcho. This pod has been frequenting the hotspot the last couple of days, behaving relatively mellow, we hung out with them briefly and then headed off to see if there were any other pods about.

We came across a group of mums and calves who were feeling a bit more social! They treated everyone to a nice close pass popping up right next to the boat then diving back down below the surface.

These Orca are part of the largest pod in the canyon, Split Tip’s pod which is currently 23 orca strong! However, none of the others seemed to be close by as we didn’t spot the rest of the pod for the whole day.

This tends to happen when pods get to this size, you more commonly see groups breaking away and spending some time on their own.

The mums group consisted of Kirra and her calf Basil, Shredder and her calf No Name and Smudge with her calf Mamang. Calves are often curious of the boat and love to come and inspect us, which meant lots of nice close passes much to everyone’s delight!

One of the calves rolled over flashing their white belly as they swum along looking up at the passengers above. We were treated to a few more interactions and close passes before they moved on.

Orca calves take an immense amount of effort from their mothers to raise. They will nurse for around a year, female orcas have mammary slits and the calf will curl its tongue to channel the milk into its throat. They will begin to eat solid food before they are fully weaned. During those first few years the mother will often collect the prey and bring it to her calf, then after weaning the mother will begin to teach the calf how to hunt and it will eventually be involved in this process. It will be around 5 years before a female is ready to have another calf.

The mums and calves had moved on somewhere else and we could no longer see them, which is a good reminder that these interactions are on the orcas terms, they can come and play if they want too, but they can also disappear if they want some space, luckily for us much more often than not they want to hang out or don’t seem to mind having us around.

We cruised along for about an hour seeing if we could pick up another pod somewhere else. It seemed like there weren’t many other orca around today, but we didn’t mind because later in the day we came back across the mums group and they wanted to play some more! The whole group swum right up across the bow and then ducked down to zoom along the side of the boat popping back up and the stern. We got a few more close passes like this, with everyone cheering nice and loudly as the orca surfaced close by.

We popped in to check out Glasse Island on the way back in, there were a few sealions hauled up having a nice snooze. Most of the crested terns that have been breeding and nesting on the island have headed off, but they’ve left their stinky mark behind.

-Naturaliste Charters

This post was adapted from a Facebook post, see the original here.

Photos taken by Sara Hysong-Shimazu and Machi Yoshida. Blog written by Marine Biologist Naomi Sharp.


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