Field Notes 2011
Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Kati of Remote Passages Marine Excursions reports gray whales along the open west coast of Vancouver Island, just minutes outside Tofino harbour.

April 27: Our first mother & calf pairs have arrived! We first had a report of "a large spout, with another small spout close by" on April 15th from Misty Lawson of the local whale watch fleet, but no actual sighting of a calf that day. Our first confirmed Gray Whale mother and calf sighting came on April 20th from the crew aboard Remote Passages Marine Excursion's vessel Sun Raven off Tree Island. Much to our surprise, we sighted a Humpback Whale mother and calf only three days later!

Checking the reports from Observation Post #6 (the ACS/LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project at Point Vicente near Los Angeles), it seems we can expect quite a few new Gray Whale calves by May 7th or 8th—about three weeks after high numbers of mom & calf pairs first arrived off Point Vicente.

April 13: Still many challenging days getting to the outside coast to be with the migrating Gray Whales. On days when the sea conditions are good, we are regularly seeing the whales in groups of 4 to 5 travelling along their route, almost point-to-point from Cox Pt. to Lennard Is. to the west side of Cleland Is., and then angling north towards Estevan Pt. On calmer days, the whales seem to move a mile or two further offshore to travel.

We do have a couple of interesting reports from our small whale watching fleet. The first 'friendlies' of the season were reported on April 8th — three Gray Whales 'hanging out' so close to one vessel that the driver had to turn off the boat engines and wait until the whales lost interest before he could be underway again. And on April 9th, our crew noted a report of three Gray Whales already feeding — this was seen off Long Beach, about 15 miles south of Tofino. Long Beach is an area the Grays like for bottom feeding, and especially in May and early June. It is interesting to see them there a little earlier than usual this year, as the air is still cool, the salmonberry blossoms are only just beginning to bloom, and everything else is also about 2-3 weeks later than usual!

March 13: What a buffetting these last couple of weeks. We have only had a very few days when we could get outside to see the migrators. Just got through another 40 - 50 knot blow today, with sea swell forcasted to be at 7 metres tomorrow.

The tsunami was felt here in Tofino. In the harbour, we saw a couple of swells come in against the outflowing tide, causing about a half metre rise each time. It was quite something to see the tidal flow stopped and even reversed off the end of our dock. This happened between 7 & 8 a.m. on Friday. For our part, we rafted our boats and moved them off the dock to idle over a deep part of the harbour until the Coast Guard gave the all clear. Thankfully, we have heard of no damage locally.

March 6: Don Travers & guests (at last!) sighted 6 northbound migrating Gray Whales off Wilf Rock, south of Vargas Island near Tofino. Then on our afternoon excursion, guide Randy Frank confirmed 6 Gray Whales — likely the same group — traveling past Cleland Island, just north and west of Vargas.

Our first sighting of a migrating Gray Whale is later than usual this year, likely because poor sea conditions have kept us on inside waters for much of late February and early March. The Principal Lightkeeper at nearby Lennard Island station, Tony Gre enall, comments that conditions have been so rough this spring, it would have been difficult to see whale spouts on most days, even from the vantage of the island’s light tower.

We are looking forward to the start of the 25th Annual Pacific Rim Whale Festival (March 19th – 27th), especially as the marine forecast for opening weekend looks quite nice!

Gray Whale Migration Route Map

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