Photograph: Alamy
The tall dorsal fin scythes through the water with barely a ripple. The cello theme from Jaws starts up in my head. But this is something far more graceful than a shark: it’s that sleek, black and white killing machine of the sea, the orca. The captain cuts the engines, we watch the fin describe a semi-circle with a radius of 50 metres around our small boat.
Then a remarkable thing happens: the fin turns and heads at speed towards us. And I’m only thinking one thing.
We’re going to need a much bigger boat.
The killer whale dives, becomes a silvery shape flashing under the waves, and I clearly see it glide directly underneath us. We rush to the other side of the boat in time to watch it surface, just a few metres away, with a salmon in its mouth. He gives a little victory roll and dives. It is an astonishing sight.
“To have a single, transient killer whale come up to the boat like that, that’s just awe-inspiring,” says our captain, Fraser Murray.
He’s not surprised to have seen one, merely that it came so close. Even in late September, whales and orca are still a common sight here in the Broughton Archipelago, off the coast of west Canada’s Vancouver Island. And this isn’t even one of the whale-watching tours: this is just a normal part of the commute out to Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort, an eco-friendly luxury lodge deep in the Great Bear Rainforest where there are no roads. Murray, son of the original founder and with the rugged good looks of Hollywood star James Franco, is the resort’s boss. “There are 68 identified humpback whales in this area, too,” he says.
And, sure enough, just 20 minutes later … thar she blows! The telltale spout of water is swiftly followed by the rising bulk of a humpback whale, imposing despite the distance; then another; and still another. There are only 80,000 of these noble creatures left in the world, larger than a double-decker bus, but far more graceful.
Murray cuts the engines again so we can watch. “We’re not seeing any more than three of this pod at any one time,” he says, “but I reckon there’s four, more likely five here.”
He’s an expert in guessing the patterns of their dives, and predicting where to look next. One whale swims up close: you’re meant to keep 100 metres away, so as not to disturb them, but he approached us rather than the other way round. As he dives, his tail flicks up into the air like a gigantic mermaid.
After this, it doesn’t seem that surprising to find a herd of 100 sea lions basking on the rocks like huge brown slugs with whiskers. Their loud, guttural rumbling is other-worldly, like Chewbacca from Star Wars might sound if his voice were as deep as Darth Vader’s. And the smell! Acrid, ammoniac and salty. Murray says that you often see dolphins, too, “in shoals of hundreds or even thousands”.
Out here, you really get a sense of the teeming abundance of British Columbia’s waters, and its vast unspoilt beauty. Behind us is beautiful Vancouver Island . Ahead of us is the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the last great unspoilt wildernesses in the world, where we will spend an unforgettable two nights at the Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort, and watch grizzly bears in the wild.
In British Columbia, whale-watching is just the start of the adventure.
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