August 15, 2009: Day Six

The story today is whales, lots of whales!  One of the things drawing us to the Saguenay Fjord was its reputation as a feeding ground for Beluga and Minke whales.  If we were to see any whales, it would be today, on the last leg of our trip.  So it was with great anticipation that we arose, ate, packed our gear and readied our boats for the water.

Bernard’s clients were slowly awaking as we traipsed back and forth from our tent platforms, through their campsite to our boats.  But Bernard was nowhere to be seen.  Then a pile if cloth and tarps laid in a shallow grassy depression near the rocky edge of the fjord began to move.  All at once the coverings exploded and revealed Bernard, who had been sleeping there.  He was disheveled, with a bad case of bed head.  He was still wearing yesterday’s clothing that he had apparently slept in.  Staggering to his feet, he took a long drag on his cigarette and coughed.  (Bruce says he came out from under the tarps with the thing lit in his mouth, but I didn’t see it.)

We continued to load our boats as Bernard began breakfast for his clients.  He apparently had something on his mind as he called to Gaetan.  It seems that Bernard was convinced that Gaetan was acting as an unlicensed paid guide, escorting us Americans on this trip.  He threatened to report Gaetan to the authorities.  That was quite a complement to the planning that Marie-France and Gaetan had done in preparation for our adventure!   We all assured Bernard that neither Gaetan nor anyone else was a paid guide on our trip, but I’m not sure he was convinced. 

As we prepared to depart, Bernard, concerned that we were intending to pull out at Baie Saint-Catherine on the St. Lawrence River, warned us of difficult currents in the area and recommended that we pull out at Tadoussac instead.  Tadoussac is on the eastern side of the fjord where it empties into the St. Lawrence, while St. Catherine is on the western side.  However, there is a free ferry service between the villages that would allow us to pick up our cars and return for the boats.  We agreed that this sounded like a good idea.  

At about this point, Bernard pointed to the far side of the fjord and shouted, “Whales!”  He was very excited, but we could make out nothing that we could associate with whales.  Even so, our excitement began to build as we paddled out of the campsite at Anse aux Pitites Ilse into the fjord. 

The weather was somewhat overcast but not dark.  There was very little wind and consequently very little wave action.  As we rounded a point to the south

Gaetan: Photo by B. Romanchak

of Petites Iles and entered a fairly wide straight stretch of the fjord, we spotted plumes of spray along the far shore that could only be the exhaled breath of whales feeding.  It was really a thrilling moment to know that all the stories we had heard were true!  We stopped paddling and watched.  Soon we could make out the white backs of beluga whales as they surfaced for a quick breath of air before disappearing again to feed on the krill that is their major food source.

 

Then, we were surrounded by feeding belugas.  Apparently curious about what we were, they had quickly crossed the fjord to investigate.  They were in front of us, behind us and under us. Their white coloring made it easy to follow them in the water near our boats.  I heard Alan exclaim as a pair of belugas surfaced near his boat and made a graceful dive, passing underneath to resurface on the other side. 

I was preoccupied with trying to take videos of the whales and didn’t see this.  I was the only one with a functioning camera at that point.  Everyone was relying on me to record this event; but where should I aim the camera?  I had forgotten how difficult it is to see anything in the camera’s LCD screen with my polarized sunglasses on, so I struggled to find the whales and shoot the video.  I only got a few minutes of usable video out of nearly an hour of recording. (Click here to view the video “Belugas!”)

The loud noise of water splashing and the sound of a whale blowing right behind my left shoulder startled me.  I never saw the whale but was told that it surfaced right next to my boat.  We watched the whales for more than an hour.  It was incredible to have these huge, gentile and beautiful creatures playing around us for so long. 

Eventually they moved away, heading north into the falling tide, surfacing and feeding, surfacing and feeding in their rhythmic, measured, and graceful procession back toward Anse aux Petites Iles. That was the last we saw of them that day.  Later we saw individual minke whales surface and blow on two different sightings.  But they were far off.  Nothing would compare with that hour surrounded by the beautiful white whales. 

After the whales had departed, we paddled to the east side of the fjord hoping to see more belugas and to make our way toward Tadoussac, our end point.  We paddled into a bay in bright sunshine to take a break.  Some of us explored, some snacked and all of us took some water.  Then it was back in the boats.  We made one more stop just before the ferry terminal, timing our crossing to miss the incoming and outgoing ferries.  Then it was around the break wall and on to the beach at Tadoussac. 

Tadoussac is a pleasant tourist village, a place from which many kayak tours depart.  Bruce and I stayed on the beach with the boats and gear while Gaetan and Alan headed for the ferry to pick up the cars in Saint Catherine.  Too soon, the cars returned and we set about

packing gear and boats for the trip back to Quebec City and Marie-France’s welcoming celebratory dinner.  It had been a wonderful trip, a trip to revisit many, many times in the days ahead. 

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