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!
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