To Live with Whales The Diary of a whale watcher.

After a 24 hours bus ride from Vancouver to Price Rupert, a 3 hour ferry to Hartley Bay and a further 1 hour boat ride we finally arrived on Gil Island. To say the first 24 hours have been amazing would be an understatement, First was a Fin whale, right in the bay, 2nd largest animal on the planet, so impressive. Next it was the humpbacks, very far away i watched with binoculars for about an hour. Set up my tent which was a mission and a half but thank god the sun has been shining since we arrived.

After a lovely dinner with Janie, Herman, Aaron, Sole and dogs Neekos, Cohen it was time for bed, not without one last Fin whale sighting and watching a few local sea lions playing near the beech.

I slept like a log with my hot water bottle keeping me toasty i awoke at 6.30 to Janie running past my tent shouting ‘ORCA ORCA MEGAN ORCA’ I practically flew out my tent and ran over to the lab just in time for a sunrise with 4 Transient orca hugging the shoreline of the bay, within an hour we watched through binoculars another pod of transient orca leaping out the water in hunting mode. We jumped on the boat as soon as we could and raced over to catch them. We found them circling a huge group of Sea lions on a rock and watched as the attempted to wave them off with waves. After no luck they moved on. So we headed back only to run into 2 Humpbacks, a mother and a juvenile. All this by 12pm! WHAT A MORNING.

Got a good rundown of how the lab works and what we will be doing for the next 6 weeks. Extremely exiting stuff ahead! Could not be more in ore of this place, completely amazing. Finally got a chance to tell contact home and thats all for now! The internet is really slow so pictures will be rare until i return.