By Jonathan Riley – TC • Media
Whale watchers off Brier Island spent an hour watching with a killer whale.
Roy Small captains the Island Link for Brier Island Lodge and Welcome Aboard Whale Watching Tours out of Westport on Brier Island.
He says passengers on the afternoon trip today, Tuesday, Sept. 18 were already having a fantastic trip.
“There was a lot of seabird activity, we saw several humpbacks, fin whales, minkes, it was already the trip of the year,” says Small.
Then about 12:30 p.m. while watching a pod of six humpbacks about 12 km northwest of Brier Island, they noticed a high dorsal fin a little farther off.
“As soon as we saw it we thought it must be a killer whale,” says Small. “There just isn’t anything else with a dorsal fin like that.”
The passengers on the Island Link spent the next hour and half watching a whale you almost never see in the Bay of Fundy.
Small has never seen one in 22 years on the water as a lobster fisherman and whale watch captain. He says another Brier Island boat saw one two years ago and he believes this may be the same one.
“It has a little nick in the dorsal that they use to identify it,” he says. “It looks like the same one but it wasn’t anywhere near as active last time as it was today.”
He says the whale fluked, tail slapped and even breached four or fiver times.
Small hung on to the whale until Mariner Cruises arrived so another boat of whale watchers could see the rare sighting.
