Telegraph Cove - Historic Side

 We've visited Telegraph Cove every year for the last 5 summers now, and looking back through our past posts it occurred to me that while we'd talked about people and animals of all sorts, we haven't actually shared that many pictures of the town itself. Compounding that, part of the town is very pretty and historical while part of it is a rather ugly motel, so we actually don't really have photographs of ALL of it, even after all these years. Below is a look down into the marina from the RV park where we usually camp out.

 A boardwalk runs around the edge of the cove along which the entire historical part of town is built up, with dock access in a few spots depending on which side your boat is moored on. The red building in the middle is the Old Saltery Pub which has very frequent salmon barbeques and does a pretty great seafood linguini as well.

 This is a view coming back into town from on one of the whale watching boats, and has a nice look at the Stubb's Island office and the Whale Interpretive Centre. The little houses nestled on the hillside are pretty charming and the great people and good times to be hand keep bringing us back year after year.

Northern Residents of Telegraph Cove

There are several distinct populations of orca in the waters of British Columbia, and the pods most common to the Telegraph Cove area belong to the Northern Residents. These orcas are specialized in eating chinook salmon, nearly to the exclusion of all other potential foods and are an iconic part of the landscape of northern Vancouver Island.

 They travel in pods between a pair to several dozen and like all orca, have a matriarchal society in which the sons stay with their mothers most of their life (according to a book we read last year, sons may spend up to 65% of their life within a body length of their mother). Since they must constantly come up for air, they can only let half of their brain sleep at atime, so they are commonly found in a resting formation where they travel along slowly and breathe frequently.

 When fully awake and active, their behaviour can be quite varied and exciting with all manner of spy hops (below), tail slaps, pectoral fin waves, breaches and vocalization. People only began seriously studying these animals in the 50s and the volume of information yet to be learned is huge, but with such striking and charismatic behaviour there should be no shortage of excited researchers and observers.

Family and Friends to be Thankful For

 With our health, happiness and loving marraige, we both have a lot to be thankful for. Most of that is difficult to express in a quick trio of photos, but we also had visits with dear family and friends this year which are much easier to summarize in a blogpost as people who most certainly help us through the years. Kathryn's parents shared a nice week with us earlier in the summer, allowing for some nice excursions from the city along with an overdue visit. They are an excellent example of how to be married for decades and still be very much in love.

 My cousin Simone and her husband Robbie were in town for a visit this summer as well, and we had a surreal crossover with them and my old friend Riley from Manitoba and the long long ago. It was really great to catch up with people I hadn't seen for years and pretty much pick up where we last left things off.

 Rounding out the summer, my dad came along with us to Telegraph Cove for some wildlife viewing and good company. As always, our friends at Stubbs Island Whale Watching were incredibly generous with their time and we had a dinner party/barbeque pretty much every night we were up there.

 

 There are many more dear people in our lives than we have quick reference photos of, but to everyone that is a part of our routine in Vancouver or elsewhere, thank you for being in our lives and we are no doubt past due for a proper visit.

Telegraph Cove Birds

 While the mammals are overwhelming in Telegraph Cove, there is a plethora of stunning birds to be seen if you can stop your head from spinning after all the cetaceans. There were a pair of peregrine falcons living along a nearby roadside which obliged us with a number of fly-bys. My dad was very quick on the draw and got this stunning photo with all the detail in the feathers and tack-sharp focus.

 Of course, some of the locals are more leisurely about having their photos taken like this great blue heron which was foraging along the entrance to the cove as our tour set out. While they are a common sight all along the coast of BC, we never tire of them or their primeval stature. Watch one of these for a few minutes and you'll have no problem believing that some dinosaurs eventually took to the air.

 While neither of us are big gull enthusiasts, my dad is quite the fan and his interest certainly makes them more of a draw. This California gull was perched helpfully on one of the pier pilings in the cove and there were dozens of others scattered around the area, just waiting to be scanned for rarities.

Black Bears on the Boardwalk and Grizzlies of the Deep

With the draw of whales near Telegraph Cove, its easy to forget the other major mammals in the area, both on land and in the water. Telegraph Cove is built up on boardwalks along the coast, and one morning this young black bear followed a stream down to the sea and was wandering around at low tide looking for tasty invertebrates under the rocks. He seemed quite unphased by the gaggle of tourists following along above and taking his picture.

 Out in the water, the Steller Sea Lions are equally impressive mammals. Since we typically see them from boats where we are both far away and much higher up they can seem comical, but they are pretty big and impressive creatures in their own rights. They are infact the largest of the eared seals and combine the size of bears with the sociability of dogs.

 Carrying the bear analogy one step further, the Whale Interpretive Centre has skeleton samples of most of the resident mammals, and a quick comparison between a grizzly bear and a steller sea lion shows more than a passing resemblance. This should not come as a huge surprise since both groups share common Arctoidea ancestors and are really just different twigs on the same branch of the mammalian family tree.

"Roughing It" in Qualicum Bay + Bonus Vancouver Island Timelapse

A bit late in stating the fact but we have had a lot to post about lately.  So lets go back to the Easter long weekend where Geordie and I headed to the very sweet community of Qualicum Bay.  We stayed at the below place which was beach front.  We saw LOTS of Harlequin ducks, sea birds and even some whales waaaaay off in the distance. 

It also had a BBQ where Geordie and myself gorged ourselves on free meat. For some reason a lot of the time we get given free meats when we visit Vancouver Island. Last year it was fresh caught Sockeye Salmon. This year free shishkabob.  So we filled it with delicious carcinogens and ate it all up.  So much meat!  It was a great place to stay and hope to use it again.

And because that is what we do here is a timelapse taken from the fence in the first picture. It captures the tides in a wonderful way and you can see bunches of different ducks and even a seal in it.  Very lovely misty mornings.

G: Since the video above is actually a collection of timelapses, the clip she's talking about is the 2nd one. We also have some nice shots from Telegraph Cove and Tofino in there to round out the set. As always, if it won't play on its own, right click to open the original file in Vimeo :)

Hundreds of Dolphins!

Geordie and I got to scratch one off our bucket list the week of July 10th.  We went on our annual pilgrimage to Telegraph Cove to see friends, beautiful scenery and gorgeous wildlife.  Out with Stubbs Island Whale Watching there came a report of a super pod of Pacific White Sided Dolphins, so we set out to find them.  To count them try to estimate how many you see out of the water at once and them multiply it by 3-5.  There were over 200 in this super pod which is rare for this time of year as it is kind of early.  The photos do not do them justice.  Video is forthcoming.

They were very active. They went all around the boat. Mating, half breaching, tail slapping, jumping and as the fellow below is doing: popcorning.  Just like popcorn popping he shot straight into the air near vertical to land on his right side. He did this repeatedly in about the same spot.

 

In addition to the above activities they were also bow riding.  Pacific white sided dolphins often engage in play with boats and boat wakes.  The wake of the boat gives them surf to play in.  The wake at the side and the push wave at the front gives them a speed boost which must be extra exhilarating. Putting the hydrophone down got us some extra great vocalizations as well.

Camping the Cove

For the first time, we camped in Telegraph Cove.  Rubes that we are, instead of using the tent camp ground that was about 1 kilometre or so in the interior (ie: in the mud), I was able to get us a spot in the RV camp.  We promptly lowered the property values as we were the only tiny tent in a lot full of swish RVs that belonged to either early retirees or rich familes.  A fact that was not lost on the gently mocking inhabitants who were in fact quite nice and gave some huge fillets of Pinks salmon!  And the cutest little boy/girl was having a blast blowing bubbles.

The below vessel is the Gikumi, named for a Native Chief.  It is an oft photographed boat and is featured in many a photo book of the West Coast and/or Vancouver Island.  Really. Pick up the nearest one and check. The building in the back is Stubb's Island Whale Watching (recommended) and the Whale Interpretive Centre (also recommended).

The building mentioned above, the WIC, is the one on the right side of the photo just where the big bunch of trees end.  This is a spherical plan taken from a dock that is almost in the middle of the cove.  Historical Telegraph Cove is at the top Modern Telegraph Cove is at the bottom.  Very differently styled sections. The result of two different developers.

Telegraph Cove Highlight Reel

We've finished the basic cut of our Telegraph Cove highlights and rather than sit on it and noodle stabilization for another month or two I thought I'd get it uploaded and see how everyone likes it.

A few quick notes about it. The intro staccato shots were meant to be part of a more lengthy and fluid time lapse, but our trailcam was an unruly machine and this was the best we got out of it. We've since upgraded the firmware and its working properly, but if anyone is interested in getting one themselves, drop me a line and I'll help you avoid some of pitfalls we found with the damn things.

Also some of our shots are still a little shakier than I'd like, but given they were mostly shot through long telephoto lenses with shakey hands from the pitching deck of a boat and looking into ever-changing water, I will call any result a success :P

Sea Birds

 We've spent a few posts covering the mammals we saw in Telegraph Cove, but there was a nice little selection of sea birds to be enjoyed out there as well. They are typically rather skittish and much smaller than whales, so they can be trickier to get photos of, and while I certainly didn't get any for prints on the wall, there's a couple worth sharing. Starting off with this rhinoceros auklet, which gets its name in part from a little bump on the bill like a horn which isn't very prominent in this individual.

 We also saw a goodly number of common murres, which we had seen in the past when they weren't doing too well at all. These ones were quite healthy and active in the area. We have also seen these in England where they are known as common guillemots.

 And rounding out our set we have red-necked phalaropes which were standing and feeding on the kelp beds far out at sea. It felt very odd seeing little shorebirds walking around on the water several kilometers from shore, but they seemed to be doing quite well for themselves so clearly its a system that works.

Not quite as exciting as breaching whales, but all very nice in their own ways and easier to spot than a feeding humpback at the bottom of the sea.

Humpback Whales

 Telegraph Cove is most famous for its Orcas, but truth be told I was more excited about the potential for Humpback Whales, having seen Orcas several times before. We had seen Humpbacks once at Ucluelet, but not very closely or carrying out very interesting behaviour. In our weekend out we saw Humpbacks every day split between 8 or more distinct individuals. The most common encounter is a simple breath, often accompanied by a fluke like the one below. This one passed right under our boat seconds after this dive.

 We also saw a few instances of lunge feeding, which occurs when the whale finds a sizeable ball of bait fish or something similar and charges at it with its mouth gaping in an effort to swallow as much as it can. This is pretty incredible and happens very fast for an animal of that size. In one instance we are still unsure if the whale in question accidentally swallowed a gull that had been attracted by the fish.

 Rounding out our humpback behaviour checklist, this particular animal was very active early in the morning and breached perhaps a dozen times with acrobatics varying from a full 360 degree turn in the air to a series of impressive leaps. We were both spoiled for camera opportunities here and got lots of pictures and video to round out our collection. The same animal was fin slapping the water afterwards and we could hear other splashes in the distant fog, so a few individuals could have been communicating or simply having fun.

All in all it was a spectacular series of sightings with one of the most impressive and acrobatic marine mammals we have ever had the pleasure to see.

Orcas

There were two types of whales in the Telegraph Cove area when we were up there. One was the Orca or Killer Whale (although they are technically dolphins and not whales, though the particulars of such categorization are somewhat lost to me) which we saw quite a few of on our first day out.

 The orcas are divided into 3 groups: transients which move around a lot and hunt marine mammals, residents which are more local and eat fish, and offshore which are the least understood and believed to eat sharks. Of the three, most of the animals we saw were residents although there were some transients in the area. This particular female was `porpoising` her way along, breaching repeatedly and in a hurry to get places. She was tricky to predict so while she was spectacular to see leaping, this was the best picture I was able to get.

 We did manage to get ridiculously close to them though as a pair passed directly under our boat while we were watching some other groups and spouted immediately after passing the boat. The shot below is actually not cropped in any way as I had a fairly telephoto lens on my camera and this one was perhaps 5 feet away from us.

We`ve seen orcas before and had some particularly incredible encouters already, but this was an incredible set of sightings to rival all the others we`ve had.

All Aboard the Gizmo

 This labor day long weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to Telegraph Cove to visit some friends from our 2010 safari. Rogers boat, the 'Gizmo,' has been completed since we were last there and he was a most gracious host to let us stay onboard and take us out on the water every day. As a co-owner of the Stubbs Island Whale Watching, he's very active in marine mammal education and research who leaps at any chance to get people out looking at whales.

 To say that the Gizmo is a fantastic boat is a gross understatement. Its got all the bells and whistles as Kathryn can show while grinning and relaxing in the spare bedroom. We were able to have adventures, cook meals and sleep incredibly comfortably for the whole weekend without really setting foot on shore.

 Gizmo can be controlled both in the cabin and from the observation deck on the roof. Here's Roger and Kathryn scouring the horizon for cetaceans from the top deck. Behind them is Gadjet, a small zodiac-style craft which can be lowered off the back via crane. There's also a few kayaks on the back for when you feel like kayaking. Did we mention this boat has a bit of everything?

Huge thanks once again to Roger for being such a great and patient host :)

Friends on the Island

Rounding out our trip to Vancouver Island, here's a few pictures of our friends we visited on the trip. Jim and Mary live in Telegraph Cove and took us out on their whale watching boat. They were also on our trip to Africa and shared in all our adventures over there.Roger and Colleen met up with us from Campbell River and the Comox Valley respectively. Roger was in our van throughout most of the Africa trip and put up with more than his share of our nonsense.
And here's one of the group of Africa veterans, along with Joey the dog. Good times and good people :)

Telegraph Cove

Our friends in Telegraph Cove run a little company renting their cottage to vacationing visitors, and were very kind to put us up there. As you can see from the picture below, "cottage" perhaps means something else on the west coast then it does elsewhere. Needless to say we had a wonderful stay and heartily recommend their business to anyone else in the area.
Telegraph Cove seems to largely be a tourist town with a small dedicated year-round populace and an inflated population during the summer. There is a large camp ground near where we were staying and most of the business in town seems to be tourist-centric, but there is still some fishing going on in the area as shown by this fellow and his halibut.
Telegraph Cove itself is going through an odd transitional phase. The two halves of the town seem to be owned by different developers. The old half of the town is all historical buildings, museums (far left) while the new half is being developed with spacious multi-million dollar homes by the sea (development on the right). The Whale Interpretive Centre can be seen in this photo as the long red building on the far side, and the boat infront of it is the one we went on our tour in. Click the panorama below to enlarge.

Whale Interpretive Centre

Another reason that we were quite keen to get up to Telegraph Cove is that our friends there not only run a whale-watching company but also started and continue to help manage the Whale Interpretive Centre. Anyone that claims to know Kathryn at all knows that she is fascinated by bones and loves to get up close and poke at them and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. The photo below doesn't do it justice but there's also a 3rd Minke whale in the background in the left behind the front whale.
Aside from cetacean bones there was also a sizeable selection of displays on pinnipeds (seals etc) which are always favorites of mine. Below are a harbor seal and Stellar's sea lion; having seen both of those types of animals in the wild so often it was really neat to see how they fit together under the blubber.
I feel that the quality of whale skeletons on display here is better than anything I've seen outside of London or Paris and the place is a real testament to the dedication they have put into it. Anyone who finds themselves in that neck of the woods is heartily recommended to go give it a look.