Big Mama is a huge deal up here in the San Juans. While humpbacks have used these inland waters for summer feeding grounds since time immemorial, there was a sad time in our history when we didn’t have humpbacks here. At the beginning of the 20th century, whalers who were looking for work after decimating the whale populations of the Atlantic came here to harvest whales from the North Pacific. The most notorious of these whaling stations was in Nanaimo, B.C., in Piper’s Lagoon, and within years of its establishment, the known local population of humpback whales was extirpated. Because knowledge of the feeding grounds is cultural - handed down from mother to calf - it would be a long time before humpbacks would return here, and longer still before they returned with any regularity.
Big Mama was the first to be documented returning annually. She was first observed in 1997 by boat captain Mark Malleson, who was dismissed when he submitted his photo of her to a local newspaper - everyone knew that humpbacks didn’t come into our inland sea - but he was vindicated when she returned in 2001, and then again in 2003. When she appeared that third time, she had a calf in tow - and thus began what we affectionately refer to as the “humpback comeback”. Since her arrival in 1997, the humpback population has increased with abandon - the first published catalog in 2015 had 100 flukes of well-known whales, and every catalog since has eclipsed the last - the 2024 catalog has over 1,000 individuals published! We credit our beloved Big Mama with that return, and it is not uncommon to hear folks on the water refer to her as “Salish Sea royalty”. She is a mother of eight, a grandmother of six, and a great-grandmother of four.
While on scene with her and her calf, we watched her as she rode the rushing waters sweeping up over Boiling Reef - a huge upwelling zone between Eastpoint on Saturna Island and Patos Island that attracts marine life of all kinds to feed on the nutrient rich waters being pushed up from the sea floor. Her calf is likely around three months old now - born in the warm waters of Au’au channel in Maui - and was rolly-polly and rambunctious, giving us great looks at their fluke and pectoral fins. Big Mama was content to lazily feed while her infant played in the ebb tide spilling over the reef. We could have stayed there for a long time with this iconic mom and calf pair, but…there were other sightings that beckoned.