Saturday's tour was a five hour Whale Spotting excursion.
I took the bus to Steveston near Richmond, to board one of two jet powered Whale Explorer boats.
The boat trip took about 1.5 hours or so to get to the spotting area - The crew had microphones in the water to tell when they were close... The sounds coming from them over the boats speakers were amazing.
I must admit to showing my ignorance, as I was expecting (at best) to see a bump or something in the water in the distance - What I wasn't ready for was a group of 15-20 Killer Whales within 100m of the boat.
Thank goodness I had bought my 70-200vr with me - The perfect lens for close quarters shots like these.
Killer Whales
The speed and grace of the animals was brilliant to see - I am sure we have all seen Dolphins (and possibly even Killer Whales) in tanks at Seaworld, but to see these huge creates playing in their natural habitat was very humbling.
Although most of the hour we were there the Whales just swam up and down ,which was impressive enough as they came up for air (as above), I was fortunate enough to capture one of them 'playing' too:
As you can imagine I took loads of photos - I will process the others when I get back home, and post a link.
Sealions
We also had a further treat on the way back to Steveston as the captain stopped at a small island to allow us to see a group of Sealions that were basking there:
Quote of the day must surely go to the French couple on the boat: "I told you we should have bought the camera today" - Yes you should!
Yet another terrific day in Canada - Off to Toronto for a couple of days now. I want to get some photos of a certain well-known waterfall...
