The highlight of this trip thus far has been the whale watching expedition in the straights between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland. My wife and I were part of a 7 person tour from The Campbell River Whale Watching and Adventure Tours. Our guide was Captain Hurricane Jack.
The tour started at 9 AM. We were all given an overly large black and red thickly insulated tour uniforms. The outfits provided warm protection from sea spray and the chill wind, but left me feeling much akin to Ralphie’s younger brother Randy in ‘A Christmas story’. Nevertheless, warm and dry was a good state to be in. Five other paying customers (the Swiss couple, the Albertan pirates, and the Foreigner) and two other crew (the photographer, Jen, and the whale spotter) joined us.
Our boat was a bright red 500 HP Zodiac with comfortable seating for eight passengers. The little red rocket made efficient time skimming the waters of the Discovery Passage and Johnstone straight.
The whales had already been spotted earlier that day by other whale watching groups making our search short. In past years when the communication systems were primitive, these tours would spend hours searching for the whales. Hurricane Jack would stop off at nearby fishermen asking if they had seen whales that day. Sometimes no whales would be found. In the modern world they use cell phones and call other tour groups to keep track of where the pods are. Today Captain Jack new where they were and that the pod was fortuitously close.
Along the way we paused to ogle at Bald Eagles, seals, aquatic birds, and a heron. Many were used to the human paparazzi and went about their own business. Only the heron was disturbed by our presence and flew off in search of more private hunting grounds.
The first sign of whales came with a burst of mist geysering up from the distance water surface. At the time, the sight was intriguing, but too far away to tell scale. As the gap closed more spouts could be seen. Each explosion marking to location of a killer whale.
I reached for my Canon and aimed it at my prey. The viewfinder squared on the bobbing dorsal fins as they lolled like the cams of a crankshaft in a slow moving truck, intermittently exposing their backs fractionally above the dark sea. The bulk, remaining predominantly hidden, easily outweighed the combined mass of our boat and every person on it. It’s tongue alone weighs up to 400 lbs.
At first I thought that these 200 foot distant views were as close as I would get, but an instant later a distresses arm with synchronized explicative pointed to a 6 foot dorsal fin attached to a twenty ton killer whale bearing directly toward us. Two seconds later the fin slipped stealthily beneath the sea while the ripples drawn by the dorsal fin abated in a false sense of abandonment mixed with a spine tingling sense of dread. Hopefully, the killer whale had not the same sense of the dramatic as the shark from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
At twenty feet from the boat and still closing the killer whale’s fin sliced the ocean open and came forth fully formed like Athena birthed by the hammer of Hephaestus. The beast’s fin carved through the air in testament to its mass and superiority, and then, with benevolence, let its mass slide from the surface and pass uneventfully beneath our now distressingly flimsy boat.
I watched the black and white mottle slide beneath our boat and waited apprehensively for it to come to the surface. To let me know that it was continuing in a direction taking it away from our small boat. With sadistic intent the Orca remained submerged. It seemed to know that the blood pressure of everyone aboard would continue to rise for as long as our imaginations created grisly possible futures. Moments passed and the nervous people scanned in all directions looking for the hidden whale as if the 20 ton creature could dash instantly to a separate angle of attack and take us by surprise. 20 seconds. 30 seconds. 37 seconds later the Orca’s fin once again sliced open the sea and show all aboard that it’s trajectory had not changed. The fin arced again and disappeared.
Captain Jack made several passes at the whales. More specifically, repositioned ourselves to let the Orcas make passes at us. Each time we sped ahead of the pod and then killed the engines so as not to annoy the Orcas. With the boat adrift the killer whales would loll passively by.
The remainder of the day was filled with whale passes, lunch breaks, and unsuccessful hunts for shore bound Grizzly Bears.