Summertime. Time of heat, heatwaves, thunderstorms and lazy days on the water. Recently, I went on a trip to Brier Island, Nova Scotia. For those who know, those trips are whale-watching trips.

Personally, I don’t care for fishing, even if my life depended on it. No, I like to watch them, see what they are up to and so on. Photography for this comes in second.

Mariner Cruises on Brier Island is a top-notch company organizing whale watching tours during the summer months. They are so confident in you seeing whales that they even offer vouchers in case there were no whales to be seen.

This is the second time I went with these guys, and again, whales aplenty. Last time, the sea was a bit rough, so we didn’t get too close to the animals, and we had to have the engine running at all times. This time, it was different. A calm sea, small waves and plenty of sunshine.

The species we saw this time was the Humpback only. Even if the above shot suggests otherwise. This one was swimming on its side, and what you see is a fin, not the back hump. Fins are white on the top in this part of the world, while whales off the coast of BC would have white on the underside.

Small differences that make recognizing the animals a little easier. Identifying them is by the tail only. Each animal has unique scars and notches in their tail, much like a human fingerprint. All whale tails photographed should be submitted to Happy Whale, where they can be identified and placed on a map for tracking purposes.

So this tail/whale came back with the name of Photon, while another animal was identified as Orion, (or O’Ryan, as someone mentioned on the boat ). Most of these animals come to the Bay of Fundy to feed and teach their young how to feed. In some pictures, you can see the greenish hue of the water, showing that it is full of nutrients.

One thing that is hard to fathom is the size of these animals. You always hear of old tales where hunters went out in kayaks to bring back a whale using harpoons etc. You'd think these are the size of a decent tuna fish. But no, these creatures are massive. They came close to the boat this time, engines were switched off completely, making the boat sway enough for some people to start feeding the fish… Luckily, I don’t suffer from motion sickness.

They were so close to the boat that you had the impression you could touch them (bad idea!). Once this one was done inspecting the other side of the boat, it went underneath it, just to surface on the other side.

I happened to be on that other side when it swam across. Above you can see the white tops of the powerful fins, the head was far beyond it already, and we didn’t even see the tail at that point.

After finding a few more whales, the trip was over, and we headed back to the shore. All in all, we had been on the water for a good 3 hours, and some snacks on shore were welcome by then. None of the whales had been slapping their tails enough to get us wet, so that was a bonus.

Until next time…

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