Three humpback whales in Tunstall Bay, Dec 22, Bowen Island

Tasli Shaw (Salishseahumpbacks.com) and Jackie Hildering (Marine Education & Research Society) and have identified the three whales as: ‘Telson’, ‘Smoke’, and a calf of the whale ‘Ghost’ based on the patterns on the underside of their flukes. All the whales are young, with ‘Smoke’ a 3yr old and the calf a 2 year old. It’s striking how the three swim together, close by and in concert, and Tasli Shaw interprets their actions in the video as “focused on interacting with each other”, “anything from play behaviour to early practice in posturing for the breeding grounds”, but nothing in their actions on video suggests they are feeding.

Here is more on the background of the whales from Tasli and Jackie.

Telson: flukes mostly white with black rim. Young animal, a new individual for the Salish Sea, and has been documented around NE Vancouver Island this summer for the first time as well. MERS has nicknamed this whale Telson. More info on Telson at

Smoke: flukes mostly black with minor irregular white: 'Smoke', (almost 3 year old) is temporarily classified as MMX0299. Smoke has been a Strait of Georgia regular since 2021, and is the 2020 calf of a well known South Eastern Alaskan female known as Flame (hence the nickname Smoke for this youngster). The striking markings came as a result of an injury or skin irritation of unknown origin that Smoke developed last summer, and the resulting markings are from the scars left from this incident.

Unnamed calf of Ghost: flukes have large fuzzy-edged white patches on black. Born in 2021 to the whale “Ghost” (BCX1333).

We are all wondering why the whales are still here and not on their way to Mexico or Hawaii. Its interesting that historic records of the whaling operations back in 1906 to 1908 in the Strait of Georgia and Howe Sound indicate the whalers caught humpback whales in November, December and January. So prior to the whaling that extirpated humpback whales in the Salish Sea for a century, humpbacks were present in those winter months. Opposition to this whaling by Captain Cates (he was running whale watch tours) claimed that over a 4 month period, 20 whales were taken from Howe Sound. My source for this is "On the Northwest, Commerical Whaling in the Pacific Northwest 1790-1967, by R.L.Webb, UBC Press, 1988, pg 169.