Gone whaling

 There was an inhale of air, and I could see a cloud of water vapour emerged from the surface of the water, with it, the dark, smooth curved body of the whale. They say there are blue whales, mink whales, fin whales and eight other different species that crowd the region , each with a name, each with its own way of blowing water out of its blowhole, each with its own unique manner of breathing and feeding. But all that detailed knowledge is beyond me, and in the short three hours, all I could manage was try to capture brief glimpses of these magnificent and awe-inspiring creatures of nature.

Our Zodiac circulated the waters around where the Fjord of Saguenay met the mighty St Laurent River and the inflowing currents of the Atlantic Ocean. It is here that every year from May to October, whales congregate to feed on the abundance of plankton and shrimps that get trapped in deep cavern-like terrain under the sea. A whale could easily feed on 4 tonnes of plankton, shrimps and fish a day, feeding up to twenty hours, for four, five months before they move on.

At least half a dozen whales I caught glimpses off. Often, it would be the captain or another fellow passenger who would shout and point out in a certain direction after attentively scouring the surface of the sea to and suddenly seeing water vapour blowing into the air. All eyes would then turn that way, sometimes only to see a tiny bit of the whale's body surface. Sometimes it's a dorsal fin, but most often just the smooth back of the majestic creatures. Rarely, if you are lucky, you get to see the entire tail surface and then quickly disappear.

As whales can stay submerged for up to twenty minutes or so before needing to breathe, it is a game of waiting and being lucky in looking in the right direction at the right moment. It could surface a few hundred metres away, and the next time it could surface even further away or perhaps just dozens of metres off of the boat. At times I wondered whether the whales knew what we were trying to do, and were toying with us by playing a clever game of hide and seek. How little and humbled I felt being so close to such a large, yet graceful and gentle creature of nature.

Fog set in, and soon we were surrounded and blinded. The trained captain with thirty years of experience under his cap sped in a direction where he knew whales are likely to appear. We all began to get drenched from the sudden downpour, and the sea wind felt bitterly cold. But even circling the seas seemingly senselessly and directionlessly, it was all worth it for just another glimpse, another close encounter with Earth's largest and one of the most intelligent mammals.