B.C. - Whale watching, Ucluelet.

 

After our morning walk, we met the whale watching group at the ramp to the small craft harbour in Ucluelet.  There were 9 of us and Scott, our guide/pilot. 

We all boarded Vitamin Sea,  were given life jackets (modern comfortable ones, not the old fashioned bulky orange ones) and Scott went over the boat operation and safety features.

Then we headed out of the harbour

and up into the inlet to look for bears along the shoreline. Scott told us they sometimes forage for berries along the shore and fish at the entrance of the river.

No bears, so we came back past the community,

cruising past the California Sea Lions. We hadn't realized that there are 2 kinds of Sea Lions here. The Stellar Sea Lions tend to hang out in more isolated areas.

These were, of course, just as noisy as the ones at Powell River and we felt sorry for the people who lived right there.

Heading out to the sea and most of the mornings fog was gone.

Out of the narrow area Scott could let her rip.

weaving around

all the islands.

One of the passengers, a tall young man from Belgium, was watching the shore with his binoculars and spotted

Bears!

As we approached the cub ran off into the forest, leaving Mum who seemed unconcerned.

Then he made his way back . We watched and snapped photos for a while. The couple from the U.K. were thrilled. They were nearing the end of a 30 day trip to Canada and had only seen chipmunks so far.

Then continued on our way. The fog was still hovering out to sea.

We were all scanning the waters for a "plume". It would stay in the air for a few seconds giving us time to spot it and identify where to look for the whale. I was either hanging out the port side window or starboard side of the transom. There was plenty of room for us all until there was a sighting and then we were all huddled at one spot.

After the plume the whale would usually surface again, sometimes sink and come up again and sometimes dive

and then we would see the tail come out of the water. Scott would try and figure out if it was a deep dive, in case we were unlikely to see him again or if he was feeding and then he would try and position the boat so we had a good view.

In total we saw 3 different Humpback Whales (seeing these I realized that the ones we saw from the ferry were Humpbacks). Each one gave us a number of sightings. My camera was not great for this. It takes a while to focus and by then I was just taking a photo of a swirl in the water so I spent most of my time just enjoying the experience, not going for a photo. The ones below are Rick's, he had his camera with the "whomper" lens on (400mm). He bought it with him for wildlife pictures but its too heavy to carry around most of the time. It paid off here.

 

I had asked Scott, at the beginning of the tour if Sea Otters were possible and as we made our way back, in increasingly choppy water, he circled a few islands, with kelp beds, looking for them

Success! Photo by Rick.

.

Mum with baby. The lighting was tricky for photos but we could see them clearly, so cute.

Some were quite curious

and one

swam out towards the boat and posed.

I was used to seeing pictures of them floating on their backs, which some of them were, but swimming they are quite big. Males can reach up to 5ft and 100lbs.

We headed back in

with Scott sharing our sightings with another tour boat.

On the way back in we saw a Bald Eagle (Scott said most were inland right now, fishing on the salmon rivers) and

another shoreline Black Bear.

It was an excellent tour, 3.5 hours on the water and fantastic weather, we couldn't have asked for anything better.