Among the whales and birds

Saturday seven of us decided it was time to get out among the whales and birds.  The whales have been here for a couple of weeks already but other things got in the way.  After a tour of Witess Bay the community, Dean and I put in above the main road and met the rest for the crossing to ...

... Gull Island.

Suddenly we heard the woosh of whales as they breached for air.  There was no predicting where they would surface.

One here, a bit of a distance away.

One barely visible out where Dean waited patiently for whales to present themselves.

Then my patience paid off.  A whale a bit closer.  These were minke whales and they were oblivious to us as they seemed to be everywhere feeding.

The whales seemed to be heading out of the bay  As we followed them out we reached Gull Island where the fog had set in for the rest of the day.

At the north end of Gull Island Dean and I explored this large cave.  The air temperature was in the mid-20s but inside the cave it was cooler.  The difference in air temperature caused a localized mist on the waters in the cave ...

... that gave an unusual effect to the picture I took of Dean.

We caught up with the others as they paddled along the outside, on the open ocean side of Gull Island.  At the southern end we checked out this cove and cave with screaming birds lodged on every foothold in the rocks.

We tried not to disturb the puffins, cormorants and gulls but it made no difference how far away we stayed.  As we approached they took to the sky in droves.

We left Gull Island and paddled back inside Witless Bay where we stopped for lunch before paddling out across the bay again to Green Island in the fog.

Green Island is also part of the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve packed with sea birds as they dotted the sky.

Sadly, after we reached Gull Island we didn't spot anymore whales.  We saw lots of minkes but not one humpback.  That will have to wait for another day.

Check out Dean's post of our whale watching paddle on his blog.