Whale Tales

 

The first full day on the Avalon peninsula began with a boat tour in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve south of St. John’s. The peninsula is shaped more or less like an “H” with four smaller peninsula’s extending north/south off the trunk. Witless Bay is located about halfway down the eastern side of the H and includes four islands that sit just offshore and serve as breeding colonies for almost a million seabirds during the active summer season. The Elliston puffin colony is large, but the four island in Witless Bay host North America’s largest Atlantic puffin colony with more than 260,000 pairs who return here every year from their winter grounds floating on the North Atlantic. They not only return to the same island; they also return to their same nesting spot and the same underground burrow where the females lay a single egg deep inside. The puffling- YES THIS IS REALLY WHAT BABY PUFFINS ARE CALLED- is fed for a short period by its parents then is left on its own until it gets hungry enough to emerge from the burrow looking for food. It then slides down the rocks into the ocean where it begins its own journey.

 

The puffin colony is huge, but unlike Elliston the four islands also host a bunch of other migratory species: the world’s second largest colony (620,000 pairs!) of Leach’s storm petrels and thousands of pairs of kittiwakes, murres, and gannets. The islands themselves are off limits to everyone except a few biology researchers and the waters around them are restricted. We were on one of the three licensed boat tour operators who are allowed to get right up to the shoreline of Gull Island, the largest of the four. The sound as we got close was incredible; each bird species having its own call; and literally every square inch of exposed land was covered with birds! Thousands of birds were swirling in the air the whole time and especially with all the little puffins flapping their wigs like crazy it looked just like a giant swarm of bugs. I’ve never seen anything like that before- it was amazing!

The boat tour was also a whale watch and within a few minutes of leaving the dock the captain spotted some humpbacks. We were able to get pretty close to a mother and calf (both huge) and followed along beside them while they surfaced and then dove down for food. 

That would have been enough for me- checked off my list- but after the boat we headed further south to St. Vincent’s Beach on the south shore. The 3-mile long beach is famous as the largest site in the world to see whales from the shore. Humpbacks and other whales spend most of the summer there and come as close as 30 feet from the beach. The ocean floor drops off nearly 200 feet right offshore and the conditions draw in capelin who spawn and “roll” in the surf. Adult humpbacks eat about one ton of these fish a day. When we got to the beach there were probably a few hundred people there spread out along the shoreline. It’s a very popular spot for locals and tourists and many people bring picnics, beach chairs, and of course lots of professional photography gear and just sit on the beach for hours watching. 

We spent about 2 hours there today and probably saw 2-3 dozen humpbacks, most of them in pairs. Everywhere you looked there were tell-tale spouts of water from their blowholes, then a few seconds later they would roll up exposing their shiny black backs, then dive back down. We got to see a few flap their tails as they were diving down deep and a few times we caught a partial breach when a whale would launch its head and mouth up out of the water. Several times the whales passed right offshore in front of us- it was incredible. Humpbacks are huge; adults are 40 to 50 feet long; and they were so close it seemed like you could almost wade out and touch them.

Will post some video tomorrow. Natural wonders abounded today!

Updated Wish List Tally: 

Icebergs, Moose, Caribou = 0

Whales = Dozens of humpbacks!

Puffins = What am I up to now? 200k??