\u201cMy favourite thing is the community and landscapes,\u201d says Booton. \u201cYou can drive 20 minutes in any direction and you\u2019re in beautiful nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuelled and caffeinated, we head out the door. Five minutes later, we\u2019re at the Discovery Harbour Marina, gearing up for a whale-watching tour through the Discovery Islands.<\/p>\n
For thousands of years, the Discovery Islands have been inhabited by Indigenous Peoples, including the Klahoose, Wei Wai Kum, We Wai Kai, Homalco, Kwiakah and Songhees Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey shaped the area that we\u2019re in and we\u2019re very fortunate to work and play in their lands,\u201d says Zoe Hasenfratz, a guide and naturalist with Campbell River Whale Watching and Adventure Tours, as we embark on a six-hour tour.<\/p>\n
Onboard Wild 1, a 30-foot vessel with a covered (and heated) interior, up to 12 passengers can move around the boat for unobstructed views. A second level provides additional vantage points.<\/p>\n
Midway through our journey, Hasenfratz cuts the engine \u2014 she has spotted a black bear along the shoreline, eating barnacles and crustaceans from the rocks. A few hours later, we\u2019re observing a pod of Bigg\u2019s orcas move through the waters off Heriot Bay. They are splashing and spyhopping, a behaviour that sees the orcas using their powerful tail flukes to hold themselves up vertically to look around above the ocean\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n
On the way back to the harbour, Hasenfratz explains the guidelines her company follows to ensure tours don\u2019t interfere with the animals \u2014 limiting viewing times, maintaining distance and reducing speed near marine life. Boats stay at least 200 metres from orcas and 100 metres from other whales, and never position themselves between the animals and the shoreline. \u201cWe want them to go about their lives,\u201d explains Hasenfratz. \u201cThey\u2019re doing what they do for survival. It\u2019s not a show that they put on for us. What we\u2019re watching is life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond these protocols, Campbell River Whale Watching also supports Wilderness International, donating a portion of ticket sales to the organization\u2019s work protecting threatened temperate rainforests on the west coast of Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy favourite thing is the community and landscapes,\u201d says Booton. \u201cYou can drive 20 minutes in any direction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-641065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}