We Did It! Our First Humpback Sighting! Blackney Passage & Johnstone Strait

Our First Humpback Sighting at Blackney Passage and Johnstone Strait, Off Cracroft Island—

Thanks to the kind folks at Lagoon Cove, we knew just where to go to have a pretty good chance of having our first humpback sighting. Apparently, a lot of boaters have claimed to see whales consistently near this island and passage. As soon as we could see around the island, we first spotted a cruise ship slowing down. We weren’t sure why until we spotted the distinctive whale’s tail flap out of the water and disappear. It appeared to be fairly close to the cruise ship, as far as we could tell.

We Got Rocked Pretty Good!

At first, it looked to us as though the cruise ship was going past us, still in the Johnstone Strait. Also, thinking they were just slowing down for their passengers to get a good glimpse of the whale. However, as we were crossing the inlet to the other side, it soon became apparent that the cruise ship was changing course and coming our way through the inlet and into Blackney Passage. Guess we should never assume such a thing, but we kept moving across, faster and faster as we realized the cruise ship kept moving into the inlet and south as well. Too late for us to change course. We made it across, but we got rocked pretty good in the process.

While all this was happening, the whale had made its way over to the inlet and made its appearance right in front of us a few times before it dove and moved to another area, out of our sight.

ADDENDUM: A few days later, when we were in Port McNeil, Jim visited the Marine Education & Research Society, near the grocery store where we re-provisioned. While I continued to the store, he got some very interesting information about the whale we saw that day. All he had to do was show them the photo we took of its tail. Her name is “Ripple” (cataloged as BCX1063). Researchers catalog and document whales in BC using fluke identification.

Just after we left the inlet, we encountered this deer swimming across Blackney Passage (below)