| |
Your Whale Watching in BC Adventure - Find it on Northern Vancouver Island!
If you're planning to do some serious whale watching in BC, then pack your bags and head for Vancouver Island! We've got these beautiful creatures out here!
Considered to be the best place to find northern Resident Orcas (and LOTS of them), the waters off northern Vancouver Island provide some of the best whale watching in BC! An experience you won't forget.
If you're going to travel to the northern Island (and we definitely think you should), there's a couple of tour companies that we can recommend. They offer different types of whale watching, but are both excellent. So start packing your bags for your whale watching in BC adventure, and we'll tell you all about it...
Best Whale Watching Tours - Northern Island
-
SEASMOKE WHALE WATCHING - If you're looking for something a little more relaxed, then Seasmoke Whale Watching is a tour we'd recommend. Guests get picked up by sailboat at Alder Bay, just south of the town of Port McNeill (located on Highway 19). From Victoria by car, it's about 5.5 hours North.
Several tours are available: 4 or 5 hour tours; or an all day 8 hour tour.
Seasmoke takes you into the breathtaking waterways of Queen Charlotte Strait, Johnstone Strait and Blackfish Sound, and is the only whale watching sailboat tour on the BC coast. This is not a high speed boat, but rather a slow, quiet ride. When we went there was no wind, and they couldn't use the sail. So we quietly motored out into the Strait.
Killer whales don't arrive in this area until June and usually hang around until early October. However, WHALES ARE UNPREDICTABLE. You may not see any (but this has never happened to us in all our years of whale watching!) When we went out with Seasmoke in July, we were hoping to see killer whales, but saw humpbacks only. Maureen told me that the best time to see killer whales is around late June.
*An extra bonus on Seasmoke tours: The tour serves up an excellent, hot homemade traditional devonshire tea for guests! Here's Graeme and Nolen digging in for a second helping on Seasmoke!
WHEN TO BOOK
It's best to call a couple of days in advance if you can, to reserve your seats. Tours are only from late June to September. They also have two locations from which you can access their tours.
If you're on a tight travel schedule, then you'll want to go to the Alder Bay, Vancouver Island location for tour pick up.
If you have some extra time, then you can take a short ferry ride over to Alert Bay, on Cormorant Island. That is their other point of departure. Either way, they'll direct you to the best location.
Check their website at
www.seasmokewhalewatching.com
, or call them at 1-800-668-6722 to get more information.
-
MACKAY WHALE WATCHING - Another very good tour company we'd recommend. Our friends went on one of their tours, and they loved it!
Mackay offers daily tours from June to October. Tours last about 4-5 hours, with a good lunch provided.
Point of departure is from the town of Port McNeill. Head to the corner of Beach Drive and Broughton Blvd, near the Visitor Information Centre.
Check their website at
www.whaletime.com
, or call them toll-free at 1-877-663-6722 to make reservations.
-
STUBBS ISLAND WHALE WATCHING - Another excellent tour company we like (and so do our friends). Stubbs Island Whale Watching is located in the picturesque, snug little village of Telegraph Cove... a great whale watching in BC destination! Follow the signs to Telegraph Cove, located just south of Port McNeill.
Stubbs Island offers daily tours from about mid-May to early October, and tours are about 3.5 hours long. If you book a whale watching tour early in the morning, it costs less than the afternoon tour.
Check their website at
www.stubbs-island.com/english/index.html
, or call them at 1-800-665-3066 for more information or to reserve your seats.
Come to Vancouver Island, and experience some of the most breathtaking scenery and whale watching in BC!
Return to Vancouver Island Whale Watching / Whale Watching in BC
|
