Wildlife in Abundance
Today we awoke to a beautiful, calm, and fog-free day here in the Alert Bay. Our tours today were thrilled with the wildlife that was all around us - from orca, to humpback, to sea lions and eagles. Playful porpoises passed the boat, birds dove down into bait ball frenzies, humpbacks opened their giant mouths as they came up in the middle of all the action, filtering out millions of small creatures from the water through their plates of baleen. Baleen was once used as a fashion accessory, especially to make corsets for women. Today, humpback whales are gradually making a comeback from a history of being hunted for their baleen, oil, and meat.
Resident orca this morning gave us a special show of porpoising, breaching, and lobtailing as they made their way toward and into Robson Bight Ecological Reserve, which is a protected nature reserve created especially to preserve the traditional rubbing beaches of the orca. This afternoon’s tour also saw orca, and all aboard the MV Seasmoke were truly amazed at these creatures and their mysterious melodies over our hydrophone.
A very special mention goes to the sea otter which was sighted this afternoon. What a rare treat in our waters. For most aboard, this was their first ever sighting of a sea otter.
Bald eagles, black oystercatchers, common murre, pigeon guillemot, red-necked phalarope and rhinoceros auklet were all seen in abundance today. In fact, the word “abundance” is the perfect word for the nature that surrounds us here in our coastal waters. What an extravagant display of beautiful creatures, all here to feast and celebrate! We here at Seasmoke feel so privileged to partake as grateful onlookers.
