Whales and more whales
I think it would be safe to say we had excellent luck while whale-watching. In fact, Nicole, the naturalist on our trip, said it was the best day she'd had all season. I have to admit I was a little nervous starting out, though.
I knew that the boat we'd booked was open, and the "you will get wet on this ride" rule applied. The outfit we went with Wild Whales Vancouver said that they provide "inclement weather gear," which I figured meant some ponchos, but turned out to be some pretty elaborate suits:
I think that makes us look more like race-car drivers than people who are about to go on a boat, but there you go. Once all 21 of us got suited up, we trundled from the storefront down to the dock where the boat was tied up, which looked like this:
Even with all the precautions, though, we really didn't get wet at all, and the weather was superb for being out on the water -- sunny and clear, and not even too cold (if you had the suits on). Nicole warned us that they spend anywhere from 3-7 hours per trip looking for whales, but they can't guarantee that you'll see any, and normally, folks see a few fins from several hundred yards away, and that's it. So they spent the two-hour outbound trip downplaying expectations, but also showing us some other wildlife, including bald eagles, harbor seals, and almost continuous leaping salmon. Nicole didn't seem to think much of the harbor seals...I got the impression that it was like someone visiting the east coast and getting excited about seeing a squirrel. But hey, folks who've never seen squirrels before think they're awesome.
The various whale-watching trips from different companies (and there are quite a few of them) all coordinate by radio, in part because they have to keep a certain distance from the whales and from each other, by law, and because they have to stagger their observation periods -- each boat is only allowed to be near the whales for an hour, no more. But they also seem to have a sense of teamwork, which was nice to hear. That coordination allowed us to find a good watching spot in short order, and then the whales started to arrive. Lots of whales, almost continuously for the whole hour. Nicole estimated we saw over 30 individuals, and considering that the entire population in that area is 87 whales, that's a large percentage.
We really learned a lot about whales, because Nicole seems to know her stuff. We're talking orcas, or killer whales, just for reference. There's "resident" whales who only eat fish (and in particular one type of salmon, which you know spells trouble when your food supply is that narrow), and "transient" whales, who eat mainly other seagoing mammals. The two groups don't interbreed, and actually seem to have separate "cultures," which is interesting. There's a northern and southern group of residents, and the southern group, which we saw, is divided into pods called J, K, and L. Evidently the markings on an orca's back, called the saddle, are unique, and some scientists can identify every whale in a pod by sight, but Nicole had some great spotter's guides with color photos to use as cheat sheets. I had to take her word for it, though, because they came and went quickly enough that it was all I could do to shout "there's one!" much less make note of their markings.
So we started out seeing a handful of the J-pod whales, mostly just swimming along surfacing every few hundred feet, which was pretty exciting on its own. As time went on, however, Nicole started to identify whales from the K and L pods as well, which is pretty unusual that they'd all be together. Nicole's best guess was that they either decided on a group hunt, or else they were having a bit of a mixer to encourage interbreeding. (The whales recognize each other with no difficulty, and can evidently tell the pods apart by their "accent" -- their particular style of vocalization. Moreover, they're smart enough to mix up the gene pool.) Regardless of the reason, that meant a lot of whales for us.
As I mentioned, the boats are required to stay a good distance away from the whales, and are never supposed to get between a mother and her calf, say. However, when there's that many whales all around, protocol says to just cut the engine and let them do their thing, which meant we ended up being quite close, and a handful even went directly under the boat. Best of all, towards the end of our viewing period, several younger whales started showing off, with the jumping and the rolling and such. So that was all pretty awesome; Nicole was nearly beside herself.
Of course, you've probably noticed that I'm not peppering this post with photos -- that's because it's really tough to photograph whales when they only surface for a few seconds at a time. However Elora did get this one:
Nicole was quite confident that's whale K-25, named Scoter (evidently pronounced "Scooter"). You can see for yourself if you check out this page and scroll down a bit.
So it was all really exciting, and quite educational, but also very tiring, enough so that we didn't really appreciate the rest of Granville Island, which is supposed to be the big tourist attraction around here. We'll have to go back another day and do that right.
I knew that the boat we'd booked was open, and the "you will get wet on this ride" rule applied. The outfit we went with Wild Whales Vancouver said that they provide "inclement weather gear," which I figured meant some ponchos, but turned out to be some pretty elaborate suits:
I think that makes us look more like race-car drivers than people who are about to go on a boat, but there you go. Once all 21 of us got suited up, we trundled from the storefront down to the dock where the boat was tied up, which looked like this:
Even with all the precautions, though, we really didn't get wet at all, and the weather was superb for being out on the water -- sunny and clear, and not even too cold (if you had the suits on). Nicole warned us that they spend anywhere from 3-7 hours per trip looking for whales, but they can't guarantee that you'll see any, and normally, folks see a few fins from several hundred yards away, and that's it. So they spent the two-hour outbound trip downplaying expectations, but also showing us some other wildlife, including bald eagles, harbor seals, and almost continuous leaping salmon. Nicole didn't seem to think much of the harbor seals...I got the impression that it was like someone visiting the east coast and getting excited about seeing a squirrel. But hey, folks who've never seen squirrels before think they're awesome.
The various whale-watching trips from different companies (and there are quite a few of them) all coordinate by radio, in part because they have to keep a certain distance from the whales and from each other, by law, and because they have to stagger their observation periods -- each boat is only allowed to be near the whales for an hour, no more. But they also seem to have a sense of teamwork, which was nice to hear. That coordination allowed us to find a good watching spot in short order, and then the whales started to arrive. Lots of whales, almost continuously for the whole hour. Nicole estimated we saw over 30 individuals, and considering that the entire population in that area is 87 whales, that's a large percentage.
We really learned a lot about whales, because Nicole seems to know her stuff. We're talking orcas, or killer whales, just for reference. There's "resident" whales who only eat fish (and in particular one type of salmon, which you know spells trouble when your food supply is that narrow), and "transient" whales, who eat mainly other seagoing mammals. The two groups don't interbreed, and actually seem to have separate "cultures," which is interesting. There's a northern and southern group of residents, and the southern group, which we saw, is divided into pods called J, K, and L. Evidently the markings on an orca's back, called the saddle, are unique, and some scientists can identify every whale in a pod by sight, but Nicole had some great spotter's guides with color photos to use as cheat sheets. I had to take her word for it, though, because they came and went quickly enough that it was all I could do to shout "there's one!" much less make note of their markings.
So we started out seeing a handful of the J-pod whales, mostly just swimming along surfacing every few hundred feet, which was pretty exciting on its own. As time went on, however, Nicole started to identify whales from the K and L pods as well, which is pretty unusual that they'd all be together. Nicole's best guess was that they either decided on a group hunt, or else they were having a bit of a mixer to encourage interbreeding. (The whales recognize each other with no difficulty, and can evidently tell the pods apart by their "accent" -- their particular style of vocalization. Moreover, they're smart enough to mix up the gene pool.) Regardless of the reason, that meant a lot of whales for us.
As I mentioned, the boats are required to stay a good distance away from the whales, and are never supposed to get between a mother and her calf, say. However, when there's that many whales all around, protocol says to just cut the engine and let them do their thing, which meant we ended up being quite close, and a handful even went directly under the boat. Best of all, towards the end of our viewing period, several younger whales started showing off, with the jumping and the rolling and such. So that was all pretty awesome; Nicole was nearly beside herself.
Of course, you've probably noticed that I'm not peppering this post with photos -- that's because it's really tough to photograph whales when they only surface for a few seconds at a time. However Elora did get this one:
Nicole was quite confident that's whale K-25, named Scoter (evidently pronounced "Scooter"). You can see for yourself if you check out this page and scroll down a bit.
So it was all really exciting, and quite educational, but also very tiring, enough so that we didn't really appreciate the rest of Granville Island, which is supposed to be the big tourist attraction around here. We'll have to go back another day and do that right.