Welp, we have arrived. This is the FINAL article from this series on British Columbia.
We’re about to go whale watching on a small boat in the Discovery Islands. Prior to this trip, I had never heard of the Discovery Islands, so before we embark, let me give you the deets. The Discovery Islands are a group of 30+ islands in the Salish Sea, which is the strait of water between Vancouver Island and the mainland coast of British Columbia, Canada. It’s a remote area and it’s pretty much paradise, as you will see in this article. In the previous article, we explored two of these islands via car & ferry: Quadra Island and Cortes Island. As awesome as that was, we still only saw a painfully small amount of the larger Discovery Islands region.
Well today, we’re going DEEP!
I’m not going to lie to you. I was very anxious the night before this excursion. What if a whale collided with the boat? Or worse—what if a whale attacked the boat? The water up here is so cold that, if you fall in, you’ve only got a minute or two before hypothermia sets in. I do my best not to Google this kind of shit… but in this case, I did. It turns out that instances of whales ramming or colliding with boats are pretty much unheard of. And yet, I was not reassured. So I forced myself to go to bed, dreading the next day.
Our journey begins in our Airbnb in Campbell River. We were lucky to find a place overlooking the harbor area, so we had a balcony with an ocean view to enjoy that morning. We had an early departure, so we were up for sunrise. And when we looked out the window towards the water, to our surprise, we saw two massive Orca fins cruising slowly along shore near the harbor! Apparently Orca fins can be up to 6+ feet tall. They were so tall and weighty that they flopped from side to side when the great beast tilted on its axis. In the early morning light, you could clearly see the cartilage-like texture of the fins as they moved back and forth. Seeing the size of those fins really put into perspective just how big these things are.
Sooooo that’s it! Article over! I guess we don’t need to go out on the boat after all.
OK OK! Sheesh. Violence is not cool. 🥺
We did our whale watching through an outfitter called Campbell River Whale Watching Adventure Tours, and they were great! I’d definitely recommend them. They are a very eco-friendly organization. During our trip, occasionally we would come across pieces of floating debris. Each time, they would stop to either pull trash out of the water or, in cases when it was too big to remove themselves, radio its location to a 3rd party for later extraction. Unsurprising, the area that we saw in this excursion was pretty much immaculate. In fact, the entire BC coast felt, against all odds, clean and untouched. Part of our respective fares with this tour operator also went to protecting a 1-square-meter piece of the British Columbia rainforest. They gave me the coordinates for my little square and a website where I could look it up. That website didn’t work, but I choose to believe this was real.
So, here’s how it works. There is a network of “spotters” sprinkled throughout the Discovery Islands. Their job is to watch for whale activity and alert the tour operators of the locations of the whale they see in real-time. And each day, once a few different boats are out on the water, they crowd-source information on the location of marine life via radio. So, as our boat departed from Campbell River, there wasn’t a planned route. We’d be going wherever whales had been seen, whether that be near or far. We actually got VERY lucky with the amount of sea life we saw on this excursion. We’ll be seeing a Humpback Whale, a Dall’s Porpoise, and a whole bunch of Orcas. At the end of the trip, they told us that this was in the top ~5% of their trips in terms of quantity of sightings. Below is a map where I have plotted the route we ended up taking that day, as well as the approximate locations of each of our sightings. The star was our point of departure/return, and the ‘fin’ icons denote our Orca sightings.
We left the harbor at Campbell River and began sailing north along the coast of Quadra Island. Within literally 5 minutes, we were slowing down to watch a Humpback Whale. These are, apparently, very common in this area. I rushed to the railing of the boat with my camera and did my best to capture the scene as the whale swam nonchalantly down the coast, spraying shoots of water 10 feet in the air through its blow hole. This was the first time I’d seen a Humpback! It was a bit nondescript floating at the surface of the water, but when it made its final dive below the surface, we got a good look at its tail. I can’t believe I was scared to do this.
Up next, we actually saw a couple more Orcas. I did not get any good shots from that sighting, but I promise there are good shots coming, so instead of showing you anything quite yet, let me tell you some of what I learned about Orcas.
Orcas, or Killer Whales, were something of a feared creature in the olden days. Apparently, back in the 1800s when this part of the world was first being explored by Europeans, their technical/scientific classification was actually “Monster.” Hilarious as this might seem, it does make some sense. Black whales with sharp teeth and shark fins? Yeah, that would have definitely felt somewhat monstrous to me if I was an early sailor of these waters. The conventional wisdom of the day was that, if you fell in the water, you needed to get out ASAP so an Orca wouldn’t eat you. If you hadn’t already guessed this, there is, in fact, no record of an Orca ever eating a human. But this was still a legitimate fear as recently as the 1960s when they actually mounted a machine gun on a coastal bluff known as Chatham Point with the aim of shooting as many Orcas as possible. 🤯 Somehow, for the time when this gun was actively scouring the seas, the Orcas stayed clear of this area and there were no casualties. So Orca/human tensions have never escalated to be anything more than a cold war. And it was not long after this that human sentiments toward Orcas began to change for the better.
As the British Columbia fishing industry grew, a new species became public enemy #1: seals. The pesky seals were always eating all the fish before the human fishermen could get to them. AND EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT ALL FISH ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE HUMANS. So when the humans realized that Orcas eat seals, a new alliance was formed. Orcas need to eat at least 1 seal per day to survive, so more Orcas = fewer seals = more fish = more profits for the fishing industry. So Orcas are now a protected species. Funny how that works. And—in spite of human-induced ecological collapse faced elsewhere in the oceans—Orcas are actually thriving. It’s nice to write about a species that is just doing great. The Killer Whales are killing it. 🏆
Nowadays, Orcas are essentially the mascot for all of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. So, you could be forgiven if you thought that Orcas only live in this region, but in fact, there are different types of Orcas in every ocean. BC/PNW is just the place where Orcas are most concentrated, most studied, and most marketed.
Here are some shots from our boat ride north through the Johnstone Strait in the Discovery Islands. This is the furthest north we’d be in this whole series on British Columbia, and with our boat moving at full speed, it was pretty frigid cold out here, even in early June. I was glad for every layer of clothing I was wearing.
We also caught a fleeting glimpse of a Dall’s Porpoise around this time. They are sometimes mistaken for Orcas because, due to their black-and-white coloring, they look a bit like small, misshapen Orcas. But this is where the acumen of our tour operators really showed through; they could identify this species just by catching a glimpse of its fin. Although Dall’s Porpoises are not endangered, they are actually a bit of a rare sighting, in no small part because they are REALLY fast. This one was too quick for me to get a picture of it, but it was cool to see all of this ecological diversity firsthand. These waters really are rich with life.
This was further reinforced when we stopped on Stuart Island for lunch. Just on the walk from the dock to the food, we saw big Red Sea Urchins at the bottom of the shallow waters, Moon Jellyfish floating at the surface, and Plumos Anemones clinging to the side of the dock. Oh, and then a bunch of sleepy seals—A.K.A. ORCA CHOW—laying in the shallows.
There are actually some super high-end resorts out here on these islands that are only accessible by boat. I am logging that information away for later use when I am rich. 👀
Okay, get ready for the Orca photo dump of a lifetime, because, after our lunch on Stuart Island, we had some very good luck.
Orcas are familial creatures. They have complex social structures, with females sitting at the top of the social pyramid. These matriarch Orcas oversee pods that often have multiple families living together, each of which can span as many as four generations. In our sightings so far, we had only seen pairs of Orcas hunting together along the coastline. But, in the strait of water separating Sonora Island and Maurelle Island, we came across a whole pod of Orcas.
The way the currents flow amongst collections of islands is always a bit of a wild card. This was something I first learned during a terrifying boat voyage in Indonesia. Ocean currents can move dangerously fast between islands. And at this particular spot, those currents were creating some pretty intense rapids. This pod of Orcas—which was probably 14 or 16 strong—was trying in vain to swim upstream, against the current, but they weren’t making much headway. Instead, they were essentially swimming in place. It was a photographer’s dream! There actually were a couple of wildlife photographers on the boat with us. I was rushing for the best real estate on the deck of the boat alongside. I think I actually got some great pictures!
And HERE are my absolute favorite pictures from this experience. Check these out…
YUP. Those are definitely some of my best pictures from 2022. But there was a lot of beauty out here that had nothing to do with Orcas. For starters, there were also numerous Bald Eagle sightings, but that’s nothing new in this series. These waterways are an endless natural paradise, surrounded on all 4 sides by massive snowcapped mountains. Every time we turned a corner, there was another gorgeous shot of a lone boat making its way home against this awesome backdrop. A couple of times we actually saw tugboats dragging enormous amounts of timber behind them in the water. Many of these boats were apparently hauling this timber down the coast all the way from Alaska! Meanwhile, overhead there were occasional bush planes flying low over the landscape. And, although we did not see this on our trip, these tours often see bears popping out of the woods as well. It’s really just an overwhelming amount of nature and beauty. Here are some additional pictures that I snapped as we made the long journey back to Campbell River.
This was all pretty unreal. As I walked back up the docks, I felt proud of myself for pushing through my anxiety and having this experience. In the future, I would have no anxiety about doing this again.
This is the end of my time in BC. Over the course of this series, I really wanted to make a point of discussing my struggles with anxiety more openly. I am not sure how good a job I have done on that… this is a new subject for me and I’m no expert. I just want to make mental health a bit less taboo for men. Or, to be more specific, straight cis men. I think I run with a relatively enlightened crowd, but mental health is really just not a common topic of conversation in my (male) circles. I’m not gonna lie: dealing with mental health issues was kind of an isolating experience for me as a man. I don’t think people realize that taboo still exists so prominently around this topic. I am grateful that all of my male friends have been supportive when I have shared my struggles with them, but for the most part, none of them have had similar experiences. Most of them are doing just fine. And I hope that’s true! But I suspect it’s not.
So, to my fellow dudes, I say this—you don’t always have to feel like shit. There is an alternative, and unfortunately, it’s going to take a bit of courage to start down that path.
You got this.
And when you feel up to it, maybe take a trip to British Columbia. 🙂
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter was born & raised in Columbus, Ohio, and started this blog when he moved from Boston to Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2014. After years based in Nashville working on his band, The Great Palumbo, he now resides in London, UK.
