their tents go up and then back down. A brief shuffling sound follows as they tussle with their sleeping bags. Then dead silence.
The next morning, the same thick fog from the night before sits heavily over a placid, glassy Pacific. In all directions, two tones of gray are spliced by the empty horizon. Five young campers, a few members of the camp staff, and I are aboard Raincoast’s sailboat Achiever, which is plying the fog-besotted waters of Fitz Hugh Sound. The Raincoast crew is giving a demonstration of its marine mammal surveying operations in the waters around Koeye. We will be observing and documenting pods of whales shuttling up and down the coast.
Captain Brian Falconer is at the helm, moving between the ship’s wheel and a slew of technological gadgetry that guards the hatch and entrance to the galley and cabin below. At his side is his first mate, Nick, a scruffy, twentysomething sailor. A young researcher named Megan is above us on a whale-watching platform, scanning the horizon with binoculars. She will be taking photos of the whales’ flukes, which, we’re told, are as distinctive as fingerprints, allowing individuals to be identified and tracked.
As the morning wears away, so does the fog, which burns off in layers, ushering in gradual sunlight. In the widening gaps of visibility we see a BC Ferries boat heading north in the distance. Closer to us, a tugboat pulls a barge laden with shipping containers in the opposite direction. So far no whales have been sighted, but it is only a matter of time, we are told. These waters are teeming with them.
Just then everyone’s attention turns to port. We look over and see a large, dark body, thirty feet away, break the surface of the water beneath a cloud of spray. It’s a humpback. As it curves out and back into the water, it drags up a huge barnacle-encrusted fluke, which glistens in a beam of sunlight. In a ballet-like denouement, the tail stands vertical and drops straight down into the water like the end of a sinking ship.
This is the opening act of an afternoon filled with humpback encounters. When the fog fully lifts we see them everywhere, often by way of their geyser-like spouts—misty exhalations drifting in clustered plumes over the ocean. We give chase, crisscrossing sections of Fitz Hugh Sound to reach them.
Roughly the size of a school bus, and weighing up to forty tons, the humpback is among the most regularly observed whales in the wild. The animals are curious, easily approachable, and given to sudden acrobatic performances, all of which makes them perfect for viewing and also made them a favorite of hunters in the past. The whales were butchered worldwide for their oil and meat between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. They came to the brink of extinction but have made a strong comeback since a hunting moratorium was put in place in the 1960s to protect them.
A certain mystique surrounds these migratory creatures because of their vocalizations. Humpback songs, a complex litany of howls, moans, and cries made largely by males, are little understood by scientists. A typical song can last up to twenty minutes, is often repeated for hours on end, and can be heard underwater up to twenty miles away. All whales in a given region tend to sing the same songs, which constantly change and evolve.
For hours we watch these giants, and they observe us. Between their lumbering yet graceful displays of aquatic ballet, the whales vanish underwater, sometimes for many minutes at a time, often reappearing much farther away than expected. In some cases, they vanish outright. In one encounter, a whale surfaces so close to the boat we can almost reach out and touch it. In that instant, the animal lingers above the surface, watching us with its dark, glistening eyes, before playfully blasting us with spray from its blowhole and vanishing into the murky depths. The plume is acrid-smelling, like rotting fish.
I park myself beside Jess Housty. At twenty-seven, she is the youngest member of the Heiltsuk tribal council, the local governing body of twelve elected officials in Bella Bella. In addition to being a councillor, Jess is the communications director at Qqs, an environmental and First Nations activist, and a writer, poet, fundraiser, occasional teacher, public speaker, and collector of traditional tales. She can, as well, identify all manner of local flora and fauna, and find and prepare medicinal herbs. In speaking with her, one gets the sense of