"Adopted Killer"

 
Tonight our Kayaking Club hosted a talk by Dr. Jack Lawson, a research scientist at DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans), on whales and how we as kayakers should or should not interect with these mammals and how we can also help with regards to "Codes of Conduct" and reporting sitings especially with photographs. The talk covered most whales that frequent our waters in the North Atlantic at different times of the year. The talk was very informative and of course Dr. Lawson very knowledgeable. New insight about whales, their feeding, mating and communication behaviors was gained.
I've always had an interest in them and in 2002 I adopted one in a program out of the Vancouver Museum in Britih Columbia whose monies were used to help fund research and such for the West Coast Transients and Resident Killer Whales.

The whale I adopted at the time name was Nimpkish(A33),named after the Nimpkish River, which flows into the Johnston Strait of Port McNeill, is an adult male killer whale thought to have been born in 1971. He's the son of Scimitar(A12), and has a younger sister, Simoom(A34). An older brother, Putteney (A31), died in 1997. Nimpkish is an uncle to Somoonm's four calves: nephew Echo(A55), born in 1990, nieces Misty(A62), born in 1993, and Eclipse(A67), born in 1996, and new baby Stormy(A74), born in late 2000.

The photo above is off Nimpkishs' dorsal fin that is used to identify killer whales, it is the pic they send you when you adopt.