Ok let me preface this humpback encounter with the amazingness that came before we even got with them…
We headed out across the Strait of Georgia without any reports and decided to head over to Belle Chains first. The Steller Sea Lion rock was covered in them, Males, Females,Juveniles! All grumbling and playing in the water, we started to leave to carry on and spotted to Bald Eagles in a tree on another islet, who promptly took flight… we thought awe bummer that’s it for the eagles for now… nope! One swoops down and plucks some kind of bird from the water, carries it to another islet and starts plucking it and eating it!!! Then we heard someone had picked up a humpback or two (those two we didn’t even see, so there were even more humpbacks around than just the 6 we got to see!!!). Off we went to meet up with them.
As we get closer to where the other boat had a couple humpbacks they mentioned that they could see a couple more in the distance towards turn point. We picked up those two and what an amazing encounter!
These two humpbacks, “Stitch” and BCX01057 “Divot” (also know as “Isosceles”) were doing circles, rolling over each other, kelping, we got a partial spyhop, a bit of follow the leader, and then we got mugged by the two of them together!!!
It was freakin amazing!!!
We broke away from them for a couple minutes as a group of 3-5 Dall’s porpoise decided they wouldn’t mind a little bow riding.
We left the Dall’s and went back for a couple last minutes with Stitch and Divot.
As we took our leave of those two we saw two more humpbacks across Boundary Pass along Pender Island! We headed over to check those two out… both are new to me, haven’t yet had a really thorough look through all the humpback guides yet though. 
We followed them for about 15 minutes before it was time to be on our way again. We headed up through Plumper (I think… I remember coming out of Navy Channel for the last two whales) on our way to Active Pass and just outside Active in Swanson Channel we came across our last two humpbacks of the day! Nike and Slate!!!
We really only stopped long enough with those two for me to get a fluke shot of each from a distance before it was time to make our way back home to Granville Island… Such an epic day in every sense!!
-Ashley
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