We at MERS have known KC since 2002 when he first arrived near northeast Vancouver Island with his mother Houdini (BCX0022). "KC" is short for "Kelp Creature" since, when a first year calf, he appeared to love rolling in kelp when his mother would leave him briefly to feed. As an adult, he still seems to enjoy playing in kelp. He is a very acrobatic whale and has even ended up on the front page of a newspaper, breaching in front of Campbell River. In 2013, he was a victim of a vessel strike that left his dorsal fin badly damaged. He has also survived entanglement. 

Slash is one of the two moms among our sponsorship whales. When we at MERS first saw Slash in 2006, her injuries from a large propeller were still very raw. Even now, many years later, the scarring provides evidence of the severity of this vessel strike. She is definitely a survivor, having gone on to have a calf in 2008, 2013 and 2016. Her 2008 calf is "Moonstar" (see below). Her 2013 calf is "Stitch", nick-named for the distinct white line on her tail, and her 2016 calf is "Ocular" who has extreme scarring from entanglement. 

We have documented Argonaut around northeast Vancouver Island every year since 2009 and he has become one of the most predictably sighted whales in the area. Having been observed by thousands of whale watchers from around the world, Argonaut is quite the ambassador for his kind. The story behind Argonaut's nickname is a unique one, referencing "Jason and the Argonauts" of Greek mythology. MERS research reveals that Argonaut has survived being entangled in fishing gear at least twice.

Nick is one of the two super moms among our sponsorship whales. She is known to have had 5 calves – in 2008, 2010, 2018, 2020 and 2022. Sightings records of Nick off the coast of BC go back to 2002. She was then already an adult and one of the first whales who we frequently sighted off northeast Vancouver Island. In recent years, she is more regularly sighted near central Vancouver Island (Campbell River / Quadra Island / Cortes Island). She is often near Whale Town, which used to be a whaling station. She is a survivor of collision with a boat. She has also been sighted in the breeding grounds of Hawaii. 

Ever since first appearing in our main study area in 2008 as a juvenile, Twister has been one of the most predictably sighted whales in our core study area. He was nicknamed by a group of students for the swirl shape on the left side of his fluke. Then, ironically, in the spring of 2009 he became severely entangled in prawn traps twice in a 3-week period. Very thankfully, the entanglements were reported by the prawn fishermen to the DFO Incident Reporting Line (1-800-465-4336) and he was rescued by those with disentanglement training.

Moonstar is Slash's 2008 calf and, ever since Slash brought Moonstar to northeast Vancouver Island that first year, he has returned to the same feeding grounds every spring. We have had the privilege of watching as Slash first taught Moonstar to lunge-feed and now know that Moonstar has also gone on to master a novel feeding behaviour we have dubbed "trap-feeding". He was one of the first two whales we documented using this technique for collecting diffuse amounts of juvenile herring and have published a paper on this research.