The huge whale appeared right next to the small boat that Comox residents Lauren Lan and Sonya Schum were on as they headed to a friend’s cabin. “It was really cool to look right next to the boat and see the whole length of the whale and see all the little barrels up close,” said Lan, who captured the entire incident on video. Ten years ago this would never have happened, said Andrew Trites, a professor at UBC’s Institute of Oceans and Fisheries, adding that humpbacks are making a comeback after nearly disappearing from the area in the early 1900s. Lan and her friend Schum spotted the blow whale in the background on Thursday night and decided to get a little closer, but then the whale went out of sight. “We just stopped where we were and thought, well, we’re just going to wait,” Lan told CBC News. “Sometimes they go up very far and sometimes in the same spot.” “And then, about five minutes later, [it] he came right alongside the boat,” Lan said. WATCHES | The humpback whale approaches the boat:

The humpback whale comes close to the woman’s boat BC

Lauren Lan and her friend Sonya Schum were treated to a whale watching experience in the Georgia Strait off Vancouver Island. Videos taken by Lan show the whale diving and surfacing several times, blowing steam from its blowpipe and even slapping the surface of the water with its white flippers. Lan, who has lived on Vancouver Island for more than a decade, said it was the first time she had been this close to a blow whale. “It was exciting to see it up close, but also a bit worrying because I’ve seen them breached before,” he said. “I didn’t want him to do this with us over him.” Finally, after several minutes of the whale circling Lan’s boat, he said it accidentally stepped on the lever of the bilge pump – used to remove water from the surface of the boat. This made a loud pop sound and the whale swam away. Lan and Shum called the whale stinky. “I don’t know how you’d know this, you’re never that close, but humpback whales stink,” he said with a laugh. Professor Trites said whales have “really bad breath” because of their diet. “In British Columbia, their main prey is krill – like small shrimp – and it gets stuck in their baleen,” he said. “It rots a little bit and… so when they breathe, often that smell comes up on their breath.” A humpback calf in October 2021 in the Salish Sea. (Submitted by Pacific Whale Watch Association) The type of encounter Lan and Schum had is very rare, Trites said, adding that by turning off the engine and holding still they were doing the right thing to keep themselves and the whale safe. He said he could not tell the gender of the whale from Lan’s video, but that it had likely been hit by a motorboat in the past based on cut marks near its back. “Obviously this has had some very close encounters in the past,” he said. “It’s probably a whale that comes back here regularly to feed.” “There’s a good chance it’s in the Hawaiian population, although some of our humpbacks also come here from Mexico … it has such distinct markings that I’m sure it’s a familiar individual.” Adult humpback whales can reach 14 meters in length and weigh up to 34 tons, according to Trites.

Humpback populations have recovered

Humpback whales nearly disappeared in the Strait of Georgia after a whaling station was established at Nanaimo, about 110 km north of Victoria on Vancouver Island, in the early 1900s, Trites said, adding that the mammals’ return to the area is relatively recent. John Kalambokidis, a research biologist at Cascadia Research in Olympia, Washington, who has been tracking whales along the West Coast for 35 years, said their numbers have increased more than tenfold, at an annual rate of about seven percent.
And he said the increase was even greater in the Salish Sea, which includes the Strait of Georgia region. Trites said the whales’ comeback is one of the biggest marine success stories in recent years. “It’s just amazing that these two people experienced the recovery of nature, to see it here,” he said. “If they were out there 10 years ago, they would never have seen it. The ocean would just look empty.”