Nothing beats seeing something happen right before your eyes.
In the age of the internet and TV, wildlife seems to be within arms reach from our couches. We witness the majesty of nature and her creatures through a click of the remote but we can all agree that it’s a different kind of surreal when you see it up close and in person.
Two women in British Columbia had this exact encounter when an unexpected guest swam up to their boat.
The two women caught the events on camera.
Lauren Lan and her friend Sonja Schum were sailing to their friend’s cabin when they saw something remarkable several meters away from their small craft.
They identified the small lump that stuck out of the water as a humpback whale’s blowhole. To get a better look, the women sailed toward the spot where it was swimming.
Lan hoped the whale would show up again.
She shares with CBC that sometimes whales do swim away and there are also chances where they surface at the same spot.
Five minutes after, the whale came up right beside their boat. The women were amazed by how majestic the creature was.
Lan described the moment as “really very cool” because she saw the whole length of the whale so close that she could see the barnacles on its skin.
They were not the only ones who were excited about this sighting.
Andrew Trites, a professor at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, shared to CBC that this area was starkly different a decade ago.
He said the women would just sail through an “empty ocean” because humpback whales disappeared from the area in the early 1900s.
Lan said that it was her first time seeing a humpback whale so close.
The video showed the whale lounging around and just doing some “breathing exercises” beside their boat.
But just like other people who got this close to such large creatures, Lan said that her only worry was for the whale to breach on top of them.
Lan named their new friend “Stinky”.
As someone who saw a whale up close, Lan attested that humpback whales carry a certain stinky smell. Trites said that this smell can be attributed to their diet when krill get stuck on their baleen. The krill rots and gives off a bad smell.
It wasn’t the only thing they observed, however. Trites also pointed out that the whale had a “close encounter” before, judging by the propeller marks on its skin.
He remains hopeful, however.
He suspects that the whale comes up to the area regularly to feed. It is also probable that the whale came all the way from Hawaii or Mexico.
Humpback whales disappeared in the area when a whaling station was set up in Nanaimo. But with the recent sighting, some experts believe that it’s a sign that their populations are bouncing back bit by bit.
“It is just amazing that these two people got to experience the recovery of nature, to see it here,” Trites said.
Watch this majestic encounter of two women with a humpback whale.
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