Whales at warp speed Whale watching from aboard a former FBI jet boat STORY AND PHOTOS BY DARCY RHYNO
I
feel like a dog with my head out the car window. We’re zipping over the calm waters of Passamaquoddy Bay out of Saint Andrews, New Brunswick like a sports car down the highway. Aboard this former FBI high speed jet drive Zodiac that goes by the name of Jolly Hurricane and reaches 65 kilometres per hour on a day like this, we’ll be on the whale watching grounds out on the open Bay of Fundy in no time. We race past the 22-metre square rigged cutter, the Jolly Breeze of St. Andrews, another whale watching ship in this fleet, like it’s a school bus in the slow lane. Passengers exchange waves, everyone excited for the kind of adventure they favour. Aboard the Jolly Breeze, it’s a leisurely trip with a touch of the past, while ours is a crazy fast one with something futuristic about it. Aboard the Jolly Breeze, passengers are wandering about the wooden deck, drinks in hand, checking out the sails and webs of ropes. On the Jolly
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Hurricane, we’re dressed in puffy, orange survival suits, bobbing in our shock-absorbing seats like so many tanned minions in a weird Despicable Me spinoff. “It’s certainly part of the adventure, getting into those suits,” says Joanne Carney, co-owner with her husband Rob Carney of Jolly Breeze Whale Watching, and our guide for the trip. I have to agree. The suits are comfortable and flexible, shielding me against the fierce wind caused by our speed. Rafts of seaweed, rocky coastline, beaches, lighthouses, rustic cabins along the shore, eddies in the currents between islands—all pass by as if we’re in a time lapse film. Then our first whale. The captain cuts the engine. Just like that, not 50 metres from shore, a humpback whale blows a spout. Well, that’s what I’ve always heard a whale does, spouts water from its blowhole. But it’s more like a cloud of mist that hovers in the air as the sleek black back of this colossal
sea creature rolls to the surface, exposing its dorsal fin. Once, twice and a third time it rises to the surface. With each pass, I try to imagine what it must be like to take in great gulps of air through a hole in the back, but it’s just too foreign a concept. These are wonderfully strange creatures. On the third pass, the whale seems higher out of the water than before. We soon learn why—it’s diving. The great body of a humpback—it’s probably 16 metres in length, weighing in at something like 30,000 kilograms—angles down into the depths, bringing its widely-forked tail completely into the air. Water pours off it as the underside, marked with bright white patches, flips into view. Just before it slips without a splash below the surface, it is the exact shape of an upside-down moustache, curled ends and all. Excitement hums among the passengers, then we’re on our way again. Now that we’ve
