VIDEO: Happy hump day: Victoria angler reels in whale of a surprise
Published 5:00 pm Thursday, July 23, 2026
When Vic West resident David Jenvey cast a line from the end of the Breakwater, he was hoping to reel in a fish or two.
Instead, he caught something far more memorable – a front-row seat to the sight of a humpback whale surfacing in Victoria’s Outer Harbour.
The fleeting encounter unfolded Tuesday morning (July 21), with only Jenvey there to witness the giant marine mammal gliding through the calm waters, seemingly departing the harbour.
First alerted by the unmistakable whoosh of a whale exhaling, Jenvey grabbed his phone and scanned the water, trying to anticipate where it would surface next.
“The water was flat and calm, and then I heard it again, I saw it come up – he was almost directly in front of me,” he said.
As quickly as it appeared, the whale slipped beneath the surface and vanished.
About 30 minutes later, the familiar blow echoed across the harbour once more, a humpback surfacing between the Breakwater and the Ogden Point terminal.
“It was circling around in the harbour part by the pilot boats,” said Jenvey. “Whether that was the same one that had come back or whether it was another one, I’m not sure.”
Naturalist and Prince of Whales captain Mark Malleson said he couldn’t identify the whale in Jenvey’s video, but noted humpbacks are plentiful in the Salish Sea at this time of year.
While encountering one close to Victoria’s waterfront does happen on occasion, sightings offshore around Greater Victoria are not unusual. The same day Jenvey saw the Breakwater whale, folks at Clover Point spotted humpbacks out at sea.
Their abundance is a far cry from the animal’s recent history.
Once targeted by commercial whalers, humpback whales disappeared from the Salish Sea by the early 1900s. Even after commercial whaling ended in 1966, sightings remained rare and sporadic for decades.
That began to change in 1997, when Malleson photographed a humpback known as ‘Big Mama’ near Victoria.
The encounter marked the beginning of his long-running effort to catalogue humpbacks.
“We have now photo-catalogued over 1,000 humpbacks in the Salish Sea and documented four generations of animals here,” he said. “Big Mama has brought eight known calves here herself and is one of a few great grandmothers.”
While the identity of his morning companion will likely remain a mystery, Jenvey says the encounter is one he won’t forget.
“Even though it just lasted a few seconds a couple of times, to be standing at the Breakwater and see that is a neat nature moment,” he said.
Now he’s hoping lightning might strike twice, with another ocean giant.
Despite frequently spotting a menagerie of wildlife while out on his daily evening walks, Jenvey has yet to see a pod of killer whales venture into Victoria’s harbour, something that has happened several times over the last couple of years.
“I see otters and seals all the time, but I’ve never seen a killer whale in the harbour,” he says.
Hopefully his luck will prove better than his interrupted morning fishing expedition – Jenvey went home empty-handed.
“He scared all the fish away, I didn’t catch anything,” he says with a laugh. “But I’d rather watch a whale in the wild than maybe catch something.”