A Cetacean Vacation

Maggie Kerr-Southin
Beautiful BC Magazine - Spring 1998

"Pwooft!"

We run to the starboard side of Dagon I to catch the blow. We don't see anything, but know we're close to a Pacific grey whales.

"Eeeuugghh," Susanne Megill groans, waving her hand in front of her face. "Whale breath." When we laugh, she half-seriously cautions us. "They really do have bad breath from digesting all that shrimp. When a grey blows and you're downwind, hooo... it stinks."

Her theory is soon vindicated. "Pwoofft!" As the heart-shaped plume rises not 40 metres off the starboard side, a stench permeates the air. Then, with a giant inhalation and an arch of its notched back, the whale slips below the surface. We wait expectantly - three's the charm.

They generally come up for three breaths, then dive deep for 10 or more minutes," explains cetacean researcher Volker Deecke. "On the third dive, because it's deep, they fluke, showing the wing-like tail as they head down 30 or 40 meters."

"Pwoofft!" This time a vapour plume appears off the bow. Deecke, Susanne and William Megill, and the other guests run forward to photograph the flukes. While Janet Wieser controls the helm, I, too, stay back in the cockpit, trying to get a shot while white-knuckling a staywire.

I feel sort of silly. Here I am on a sailing sloop bobbing on the Pacific Ocean. I can't swim. I've never sailed before. And on this, the first day of a week-long trip, I'm scared. But I'm getting just what I asked for.

Planning this year's vacation, I'd decided I wanted more than relaxation. I wanted to challenge myself. Try something new. Learn, push my limits, have an adventure.

William Megill and Volker Deecke, UBC graduate students, seemed to offer the perfect education-vacation. Together with Megill's wife, Susanne, they founded CERF - Coastal Ecosystems Research Foundation - in 1993 as an innovative way to fund their cetacean research. The non-profit foundation/eco-tourism venture leases a sailboat for 10 weeks each summer, hires a crew, and takes tourists aboard to observe and assist in marine-mammal research. While some guests are along purely for the adventure, many are students doing their own fieldwork.

My fellow adventurers on this trip are Dale Pruden, a sales director for Whistler's resort industry, and Nick McGrath, an Ontario high-school student. We met as we boarded the amphibious Grumman Goose at northern Vancouver Island's Port Hardy airport. Flying north across Queen Charlotte Strait to the mainland coast, we were enrptured by the rugged coastline, emerald forests, and indigo sea.

Fifteen minutes and 40 kilometres later, we spotted Dagon I anchored in Allison Harbour on Queen Charlotte Sound, all hands aboard waving. Glistening in the sunlight, the 13-metre sloop looked spectacular. Still, a nervous knot clenched my stomach as we descended over the waves. Touch, touch, touch ... swoosh.

Deecke arrived to shuttle us and our gear to the Dagon in an aluminum runabout. While he ferried the five outgoing guests to the Goose, we met the other three crew members, had a quick safety talk, and ate freshly backed salal-berry cake served with hot tea.

An hour later, at base camp in Skull Cove, we chose tents and set up for the night while Deecke prepared a sumptuous stir-fry. We ate our dinner out in the still night air, the quiet broken occasionally by a whale's blow. Two grey whales have been resting and feeding just offshore.

Over our first breakfast, Megill explained the routine. Most days, we'll get under way when the fog lifts, about 10:30 AM. We'll trace five main transect routes to localise whales: North & South Bay to Allison Harbour; Burnett Bay to Cape Caution; Cape Caution to Hoop Bay; Table Island to Kelp Head; and Rivers Inlet.

Megill and Deecke photograph the flukes and flanks of all whales sighted, logging each whale's identity and location. Their data will be added to a catalogue of Pacific greys compiled by pre-eminent researcher Jim Darling. They plan to prove that some greys are residents of Queen Charlotte Sound. Past research indicated the greys - some 24,000 of them - merely swam along this coast while on their migratory route between the Bering Sea and Baja, Mexico.

Currently, 55 greys have been documented in Queen Charlotte Sound, and at least 19 of these are confirmed summer residents. There were 39 in the 1995 catalogue; CERF added 10 after the 1996 season, and six more in 1997. The researchers keep their whale photos in a small index file, identified with codes like G001, G96025, H005, but they know their subjects best by nicknames: Asa-Hi, Target Left, Stormy, and Noddy.

"Many have white scars," Deecke explains to the group. "Some have obvious shark and orca bites, but others are not so easily identified."

The second morning, we awake to foghorns. Days are warm when the sun comes out, but early morning fog makes the camp chilly and damp. I gulp a coffee and we're under way. No lounging this morning - we're off to Rivers Inlet, a full day's sail.

It begins to drizzle as we load our gear into the inflatable and paddle to the Dagon. The pre- trip information warned me to pack boots, rain gear, a hat, and gloves. I'm grateful for these, as well as my longjohns.

I keep Megill company at the helm. While we chat, he scans the ocean ceaselessly. Eyes right. Left. Ahead. Behind. On the starboard bow, Susanne does the same. Portside, camera in hand, Deecke also scans while he explains grey whale habits to McGrath.

"Grey wales often eat mysids, basically tiny shrimp," he says in his soft Anglicized German accent. "They feed heavily all summer to lay on blubber for winter. They eat about 3 percent of their weight per day; we eat 1 to 2 percent per day. Starting in September, they migrate south to Baja, where they mate. In spring, they start the trip back north."

Mating is basically a free-for-all. Bulls mate freely and frequently with all available cows from their arrival in late fall to their departure in late winter or early spring. In the same period, cows pregnant from the previous season give birth, nurse, and get ready for the trip north with their young.

A newborn grey whale is four to five metres long and can weigh up to 900 kg. The cow's milk is rich - 53 percent fat - and a calf may grow a full metre and double its weight before leaving its birthplace. A calf remains with its mother for only about a year, but the bond is close, protective, playful.

Grey whales live 60 to 80 years. About 12 metres long, adults average 30,000 kg. Remarkably, their prey are tiny. Greys scoop up huge ocean mouthfuls, forcing seawater out through the baleen. This set of fringed keratin plates hanging in the whale's mouth filters out the mysids, amphipods, and other small crustaceans, which are then consumed. Kelp beds in northwest-coast waters from Skull Cove to Rivers Inlet are rich with mysids. Where the current breaks up and is turbulent, mysids feed. And where mysids feed, so do grey whales.

But none are showing themselves today. I go below to warm up with tea. I pick up the kettle, draw water, and light the gimballed stove. Ah, just to sit for a few minutes...

"Maggie! They're breaching!" McGrath yells. I jump, grab my camera, stumble up the ladder. Swinging my camera into position, I shoot randomly. Unusual for greys to breach high; this fellow actually shows his tail. Maybe showing off, maybe loosening barnacles off his encrusted body, he puts on quite a display.

Tea forgotten, we motor toward Duncanby Landing in Rivers Inlet, where we'll dock and spend the night aboard. Off portside, the sun sinks toward the horizon, burnishing clouds magenta and deep rose, framing mauve water. To starboard, a double rainbow bursts from the coastal mountains, backdrop for a Pacific grey lazily surfacing, blowing a heart-shaped plume, and submerging. Surface, blow, submerge. Surface, blow, submerge. And it's gone.

"I've never seen such beauty in all my life," McGrath whispers. All on deck, we silently gaze upon the early evening sky.

Under motor again, we head for the old fish camp. As I duck below to help start dinner, Megill shouts, "Humpback! A humpback!"

"Oh, every day is so exciting," Deecke grins boyishly as we scurry on deck. Cameras in hand, we wait, and wait, for the humpback to resurface. "Humpbacks dive for much longer periods than greys," Deecke says. I marvel at the researchers' patience.

Suddenly, the blow comes 30 metres off the stern. I swing my camera to my eye. The whale dives ... then flukes. I click madly on the shutter release. Then, it's all over. We swing the Dagon north and head to Duncanby Landing.

After burritos and beer, Megill and Deecke tell us more about their subject. Historically, there were probably about 20,000 Pacific grey whales on the West Coast. Hunted relentlessly by 19th-century whalers, grey whales neared extinction by the 1870s. Whenever the population started to rebuild, it was soon reduced again. By 1920, perhaps 2,000 remained.

In 1936, several nations joined to provide partial protection, but not until 1946 were greys officially protected. In that year, under the Internation Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, 14 countries involved in whaling agreed to halt the Pacific grey whale hunt.

During the 1990s, the US removed grey whales from the endangered species list, a move Megill feels is premature. "This species is the first to be removed and the very few to have recovered." In Washington State, the First Nations people may be permitted to start whaling again. Some coastal BC First Nations have expressed a similar desire.

The story of humpbacks whales migrating through BC waters has been much the same. Historically, they were probably the most plentiful of the North Pacific's great whales. More than 23,000 - 3,000 in BC - were killed in the first three decades of this century, leaving a remnant population of 1,000 or so when internationally protected in 1966. With an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 today, humpbacks, like grey whales, have begun to reappear at ancestral feeding sites along the BC coast.

The next day, we set sail for Calvert Island in the open Pacific. Crisp, white cumulus clouds hang in the summer-blue sky, sending gusts to fill our mainsail. Megill invites me to take the helm while he finds a chart below. Me? Steer this expensive craft? Well, maybe just for a minute...

Windswept hills of green velvet rise above eroded, weary rockfaces on Calvert Island's west side. An occasional golden sandy beach looks ideal for surfing. No lack of waves here. Massive logs, thrown ashore by 150-kilometre-an-hour winter winds and eight-metre swells, lie high on the cliffs. A barge teeters over the edge of an embankment, smashed like a post-Hallowe'en pumpkin.

I stay at the helm for about three hours. Megill keeps a keen watch, laughing only a little at my zigzagging course. I'll get the real razzing later over dinner.

"Pwoofft!" "Pwoofft!" "Pwofft!" A series of blows, but not heart-shaped this time.

"Humpbacks!" Megill calls out. "Seven of them."

Three rise to the surface in an almost synchronized ballet. They blow three times, roll, show the dorsal fin, and dive. Over and over they repeat this graceful routine.

One dives as if to fluke, but instead slaps the water with its tail. Te six-metre splash showers in the sunlight, creating a brief rainbow. This tail lobbing may be to let us know we're wandered into their territory, or it could be aimed at one of the humpback gang for net getting in line. We photograph and record the locations of all seven, then move on quickly.

"It's unusual to see them in groups like that," Deecke says. "We may be seeing them start to socialize toward the mating season, or they could be grouping for migration."

Each of my seven days is filled with these wonders. As I dash from stem to stern shooting photos, I'm also filled with wonder at myself. I've survived base camp, resplendent in ankle-deep mud. I've survived sleeping in a tent with moisture and mud oozing in. I've survived a week out to sea with six complete strangers. I have done more than survived - I have thrived.