Ok gang, we have had some news on “Bobby’s” identity.  It’s all very exciting. I sent his picture out to a couple of research groups and was put in touch with Jackie from the Marine Education and Research Society. She was able to tell us lots!!

Bobby’s mom was an adult when she was  first tracked in 2011. She had a calf in 2016 and another in 2019. The first pictures of Mom and her 2019 calf were taken on June 26, 2019 in North East Vancouver island.

Mom is officially catalogued as BCX0749. She’s  nicknamed  “Claw”  because of the distinctive markings on her dorsal fin. This picture was copied from the DFO site.

BCX0749

The last known sighting of mom and calf was July 17, 2019 in Port Hardy.  Calves normally spend the first year of their lives with their Mom and then head out on their own and Claw normally hangs around the north east end of Vancouver Island. But there had been no sighting of the 2019 calf until March of this year. There had been a worry that it had died as there had been no sightings at all.

On March 5th, it came through Active Pass and then has been hanging around our island since at least March 27th. Where did he spend his winter?

So Bobby, or maybe it’s Bobbi, is Claw’s 2019 calf. As I was typing this post it just swam past me. We are trying to get better pictures of the dorsal fin and two flanks for accurate cataloging.

Many thanks to Jackie at the Marine Education and Research Society for shedding more light on our most welcome  new visitor.

We definitely would like to help them decide if it is a he

or a she……