Until last week that is. The story starts with Penny Graham, the owner and operator of Mariner Cruises Whale and Seabird Tours in beautiful – though often foggy – Brier Island, N.S. in the Bay of Fundy. She took a tour out last Friday, August 21 and they spotted a mother and her calf.
Graham, understandably, loves showing the visitors the natural splendor of the area and was enjoying their reaction to see the two whales up close. She’s seen it many, many times but she said she never tires of witnessing the joy people have seeing the big creatures in the natural habitat.
Heading back to harbour, however, they bested that by seeing something positively jaw-dropping. They came upon a humpback breaching the water – time and time again. He was big and, Graham believes, happy, and kept jumping out of the water for the excited onlookers on the boat.
Whale watching
Graham turned the engine off and they just watched. She said the whale breached at least 30 times. “Now, what a show that whale was putting on. It was just non stop,” she told the CBC. “I’m not a scientist, but I honestly believe that whale was having just as good of a time as we were.”
Then something even more jaw-dropping happened – the giant whale did a backflip. In all her years of running the whale cruise it’s something Graham had never encountered and she managed to snap a photo off at exactly the right time.
“I started whale watching in 1984 with my husband Roy when he was alive,” she said. “And never before have I captured a whale in that position.”
Tourist Sandy Seliga was on the boat and she captured the whale’s back-flip on video and posted it on YouTube, where its drawing views by the minute. It’s brief but fun and something you have surely never seen before – and may never see again.
