Whale Watching

We’re not all about the bears, whales are abundant here too!

Killer whales and humpback whales are often seen during our wildlife tours. There are resident whales and transient whales that can be seen feeding and playing in our waters.

Humpback Whale Visiting

humpback whale visiting
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The first thing to note is the white boat antenna in the left corner of the photo.  A telephoto lens was not required to get this close up. More than a dozen different humpback whales are found in our whale watching area on a daily basis. The whale safari travel about an hour from the lodge to an area close to British Columbia’s Vancouver Island and area rich in herring the many food of humpbacks. Our picnic lunches are most often eaten in the boast while we drift among feeding whales. It is sort of like the movie “Field of Dreams” but in this case if one waits quietly (boat motor off) the whales come to visit.

 

August Black Bear Cub

black bear and cub
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Guests normally arrive at Grizzly Bear Lodge on Minstrel Island between three and four o’clock. Once the luggage is moved to rooms, introduction to the lodge on the front deck, welcoming snacks of prawns or dungeness crabs it might be time or the first day’s black bear trip. “Might be” because it requires a reasonably low tide so there is a beach for the bears and at times that may be after dinner. This trip was successful finding a mother and cub on the shore looking for dinner. Important to note that this photo was taken with my small pentax with only a ten times optic zoom.  I assure you the guest photos were much better.

 

Guide Photos

eagle resting
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Bald eagles can be viewed from the front deck of the lodge on Minstrel Island as they fly from the nest behind the lodge to their fishing areas. On all the day trips for the whale watching safari, grizzly bear tours and wild river trips eagles are plentiful. The hardest part for a good bald eagle picture is to have the eagle so it is not “sky lined”. They need a dark background to set off their white head as shown in this photo. Also to note is the spread wings as it enjoys the sun while drying after the summer’s morning fog.

 

Guide Photos

flying dolphin
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Pacific white sided dolphins are frequently seen in the area of the lodge; whether on a grizzly bear tour, whale watching safari or the extra day trip to Trapper Rick’s wilderness river. The pods range in size from several hundred to over one thousand individuals. They are playful and like to ride the bow wave of our boats and will cross beneath the bow as if they are trying to see how close they can come without being fit. The prop wash is also popular and they will come within two meters (six feet) of the back of the boat. The unusual aspect of this picture is that there is only one dolphin.

 

Guide Photos

large black bear
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The first day / evening in the lodge involves an hour plus wildlife tour.
This may occur before or after dinner depending on the height of the tide as it is hard to find a black bear on the beach if there is no beach. It is a local tour that familiarizes guests with the boats, the guides and the area around the lodge. The black bear that frequent the shore are less than half the size of the grizzlies mainly because they do not have access to the salmon rivers, which are controlled by the grizzlies. The best way to judge if the black bear is a big bear is the size of its ears in relation to the head. Small Bears:  Will have a small, narrow head, almost dog like.  Their ears will appear to be much larger and defined.  Almost like “Mickey Mouse” is a common description. Big Bears:  Will have a very large, blocky looking head.  Their ears will look small, and almost off to the side of their skull a little.

 

Guide Photos

orca breath
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A pleasant morning with the orca on the lodge’s whale watching safari to Johnstone Strait. This area along the shore of Vancouver Island is the summer home to the Northern Resident killer whales. They follow the salmon into the area arriving, most years, in early June and staying until mid-October. The northern residents contain approximately 250 orca in 16 pods. It is a quite area for viewing the orca in that on most mornings there are only five or six boats in the area watching the killer whales so they tend to behave in a natural way. They are not herded about by twenty or thirty boats, as are the Southern Residents near Victoria BC.

 

Guide Photos

whale blow hole
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Over the past five years humpback whales have become more common in he area Grizzly Bear Lodge visits on whale watching days. The area close to Johnstone Straits between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia has become the summer home of more than twenty-five whales. The area has an abundant supply of herring and the whales come to feed and stay within our viewing area for a few days before moving in and out of nearby inlets. The whales start appearing in late May and there are whales all summer some days on six or eight but most days more than a dozen whales are lunge feeding and lobtailing in our viewing area.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly siting in pool
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The ending well is who has the right to fish in a certain part of the river and once that was determined food became the main concern. From first seeing the grizzly bear cubs on the beach in the spring to watching them grow over the years the dominance fight is a common theme. And the common source of the fighting is who gets the first salmon from the mother to who has fishing right on the river.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

humpback mouth
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On the whale watching tour from Grizzly Bear Lodge we are fortunate to view between eight and sixteen different humpback whales each trip. These whales spend their summer in our area feeding on the herring, which provides our guests with ample opportunities to watch them lunge feeding. In a lunge the humpbacks come up beneath a herring ball with mouths open as shown in James Kastelein’s photo. The baleen shown is a row of a large number of keratin plates attached to the upper jaw. These plates have a composition similar to those in human hair or fingernails. They are triangular in section with the largest, inward-facing side bearing fine hairs, which form a filtering mat. The humpback whale has about 330 pairs of dark gray baleen plates with coarse gray bristles hanging from the jaws. They are about 0.6 m (25 inches) long and 34 cm (13.5 inches) wide.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

orca spyhop good
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A Wikipedia quote    “When spyhopping, the whale rises and holds position partially out of the water, often exposing its entire rostrum and head, and is visually akin to a human treading water. Spyhopping is controlled and slow, and can last for minutes at a time if the whale is sufficiently inquisitive about whatever (or whomever) it is viewing.
Generally, the whale does not appear to swim to maintain its “elevated” position while spyhopping, instead relying on exceptional buoyancy control and positioning with pectoral fins. Typically the whale’s eyes will be slightly above or below the surface of the water, enabling it to see whatever is nearby on the surface.
Spyhopping often occurs during a “mugging” situation, where the focus of a whale’s attention is on a boat rather than on other nearby whales. Spyhopping among orcas may be to view prey species. For this a spyhop may be more useful than a breach, because the view is held steady for a longer period of time.” And thanks to James and Wendy Kastelein for the great photo.