Canada and New York: Sunday July 1st, Canada day.

Today our only plan was Cowichan bay Whale watching. Would we see whales? Would we get a photo of a whale breaching? Yes and yes!

Our skipper was Lance who was an Alaskan fisherman who now lives on Vancouver Island. He had an amazing past life, including being air rescued after the boat he was on hit a rock and sank in the Bering sea (young skipper fell asleep at the wheel), and also you can apparently see Lance on the 3rd season of "The Deadliest Catch" (he didn't volunteer either of these facts.. we squeezed him for information!"

Lance loves whales and knew roughly where they were. To reach them would mean going deep into US waters. It surprised me that no custom check occurred for this trip, but I'm sure there must have been a coastguard around somewhere! So inconsistent when you consider that as an airline passenger you are treated like a potential terrorist even when you transit through US airports, but on the sea you can flit around as you like.

Suiting up!

Suicide by ferry near Shwarz bay

Click to enlarge. Courtesy of Google and Runkeeper

According to my Runkeeper app, this was a personal best for my rowing workouts!

The trip was amazing. The whales were "celebrating Canada day" and were more active than Lance had seen them in weeks. We had about two hours of superb whale watching and at one point they surfaced only 50 metres away. We had to retreat as this is too close (200m restriction in US waters).

For Geelong football fans, this is part of J-pod

A tail slap

Yes, it's a little blurry, but I took it!

I suppose this was inevitable when that weight hits the water

One of the big dorsal fins

How lucky were we?!!

There is another story to tell about the Orca whales and unfortunately it's not a good one. The whales were protected in the 90s but for some reason the population failed to increase thereafter. Investigations determined that part of the problem was due to fish supplies so commercial fishing was severely restricted. Unfortunately years later the population was still depleted or stable and further research revealed that logging increases water run-off in the high streams where salmon spawn. This silt chokes the small gravel nooks and crannies where the salmon grow after spawning so logging was restricted. Unfortunately this failed to resolve the problem and extensive research revealed that the problem was the chemicals sprayed on most clothes to retard flames. Like the banned (but still used) PBCs these PBDEs are toxic to whales and being at the apex of the food chain orcas have the highest levels of these toxins in their bodies. PBDEs result in an infant mortality rate of 50% for baby orcas and those that are born often have a jaundiced colour because their liver is overloaded as it tries to cope. You can read more about it here. These toxins are banned in Europe because of the effect on whales but according to Lance the US has failed to do so. This is another example of wanton disregard for the environment. How can a country that hails itself is one of the most advanced civilisations have such regressive environmental and even social policies? We could be doing something about this..where are the factories making this stuff and who is the company?

After the whales, anything would be an anticlimax, but we did see some other amazing wildlife...