Whale Watching in the Bay of Fundy

Leaving Eastport heading northeast

Fish weirs off Northwest Harbour and
Helena Island as we approached Lords Cove

Thursday 13 September was a big day for us.  We had checked into the USA at Eastport the previous day and spent the night on a buoy there but we couldn’t take the most direct route west from Eastport because BV’s air draft is too great for her to get under the 43’ high Roosevelt Memorial bridge that connects Maine to Campobello Island.  Well, to be absolutely correct, if we had timed our departure exactly perfectly at low water we should have just squeaked BV under the bridge but it wasn’t really worth the risk.  Instead we timed our departure so that we weren’t fighting the tides and planned to leave the way we had come in, via East Quoddy Head, and hoped that we might see whales along the way too.

Lords Cove, Deer Island

But to time the tides to be in our favour, we needed to leave Eastport no later than 0900 to carry the very last of the ebb out of Friar Roads and Head Harbour Passage but if we turned to head southwest outside Campobello Island at that point we’d be bucking the tide roaring up the Bay of Fundy for the next 4 hours – not a good state of affairs! So we decided to anchor in Lords Cove, Deer Island [Ed: yes, in Canada, but we weren’t going to go ashore] for the intervening period and so make East Quoddy Light just as the tide turned south and west in our favour.  Lords Cove is a beautiful spot and, had we had more time, we could quite happily have spent several days here.  We didn’t have that time but we enjoyed our extended coffee break in the bay, oohing and ahhing at the early ‘fall’ colours and enjoying watching the tide rise and cover all the interesting hard, lumpy, bits.

Mirages creating ‘upside down islands’

We had been told that the best time to see whales off East Quoddy Light is around high tide so at 1250, about an hour before high water, we raised the anchor and headed out to the eastern end of Campobello Island.  It was a beautiful day with little wind and mirages caused the distant islands to gain upside-down doubles.  As we motored towards the lighthouse we could see a couple of boats stationary in the water….

‘Thar she blows’!

… and then we saw the first indications of whales – the blow.  To be honest, at the time we thought we were looking at finback whales but the photos clearly show these as humpbacks.  It didn’t matter what species they were though: they were whales; big, breathing, diving, don’t drive your boat into them, real live whales.  Wow!

There were a couple of commercial whale watching boats and 2 small, privately owned motor boats as well as us enjoying the spectacle of the whales (2 we think, perhaps 3) gently trundling south on the tide, having a spot of lunch.  Nothing terribly exciting, just up and down, on the surface for a bit and then dived for a bit and, it seemed, not at all bothered by having spectators at their dining table.

Every now and then one of the whales would show its flukes when it dived.

It didn’t happen very often but I was lucky and managed to get a couple of reasonable pictures of the event.

After about 30 minutes we felt we should move on and give the animals some space so we trundled southwest along the coast and within 5 minutes had sight of another whale which was being watched by only one other vessel.  We joined them and were treated to a real close-up encounter with another feeding humpback.

Two dive sequences.  Top set – whale in surface recovery mode.  Lower set – whale diving for extended period

This humpback showed its flukes far more frequently than the first ones we had seen.  It would surface from a more extended dive, ‘porpoise’ on the surface for a while and then take a final deep breath and dive, showing its flukes, for another extended underwater period.

It was fabulous to watch but, of course, we had no idea when the animal would next surface or, indeed, where.

And then it surfaced almost right in front of us!!  Nicky squeaked, thinking that she was about to run into it but we weren’t moving fast (maybe a couple of knots) and the whale obviously knew better than to surface directly in front of us – it was a little to one side.  So it ran down our port side, whilst I rapidly snapped away and Nicky pointed out that we could clearly see one of its pectoral fins shining white just under the surface.  Perhaps just a little too close then….

And after a couple more breaths….

…it dived away again; and we thought that we’d probably had the best of its time and headed off too.  What a fabulous end to our time in Canada!

The Bay of Fundy off Campobello, NS, Canada