An Electrical Bioluminescent Whale of a Birthday!

As the summer draws to a close, I have had a series of wonderful experiences to cap it off. It has been a busy season of house projects and visitors with more kayaking, less pickleball, and the usual amount of cooking, eating, hiking, and wildlife spotting.

In the last few weeks, we have welcomed my two close friends, Cynthia and Angela, as well as one of John’s Welsh work friends, also named John, and his wife Sue who just left yesterday.

Cynthia and I had quite the adventure, meeting in Victoria, then both coming down with Covid, but keeping to our planned schedule nonetheless. Two days in Victoria was followed by a couple of nights glamping (luxury camping) an hour west among the beautiful beaches of Vancouver Island, before coming back to Galiano Island. One of the first things that happened in Victoria was a sighting of three orca right in the inner harbor, which is quite unusual. Cynthia had just finished telling me that she hoped she would see orca, bald eagles, and otter on this trip and, voila, there were the orca right in front of us. I felt like a very successful tour guide! An hour later, walking on the Ogden Point breakwater, we saw them again, maybe the same ones or possibly a different group.

After leaving Victoria and during one of our afternoons glamping north of Sooke, we had returned from a local beach and were resting, tired from Covid, in our cute cabin with the door wide open. Cynthia happened to open her eyes and saw a black bear at the door. She stood up, quickly raised her arms over her head and the bear ran away. Only then did she say “April, there’s a bear.” I opened my eyes and jumped up asking “where?” but the bear was gone. Given her interest in scaring the bear away, she did not get a photo, and despite being slightly shaken, she felt this was one of several highlights of the trip. Cynthia is clearly a Canadian in disguise!

After surviving our two nights of glamping, we headed back to Galiano for several days, including my birthday. Originally, Angela had planned to come for a few nights from Victoria where she was visiting her sister and other family but those plans were curtailed due to our Covid positive status. Instead she came for a quick visit the following week.

Thus, it was left to John and Cynthia to come up with an appropriate birthday celebration. The pressure was on!

My birthday started with John making a delicious breakfast for the three of us. We then packed a picnic, put our 3 e-bikes in the back of the truck, and headed to the north end of the island where we rode into the Dionisio Point Provincial Park, accessible only on foot, bike, or by boat. We hiked, enjoyed the view and our repast and then returned by mid afternoon.

By now, we were short on time as Cynthia and I were signed up for an 8pm bioluminescence kayak tour and John still needed to make dinner while Cynthia had promised a blackberry pie. We had picked 10 cups of blackberries the day before from the vines just outside our house for this purpose.

The cooks got to work but at some point, John spotted a humpback whale in our bay and we all ran out to the deck. Moments later, the whale breached right under our noses just a few feet off the shore below our house. I just knew that it was wishing me a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! We’ve never had a whale come that close to us in our three summers here and I very much appreciated the gesture, especially since I couldn’t get anyone to sing me the entire Beatles song, “When I’m 64!”

After a delicious birthday dinner (pie had to wait until after the kayaking), Cynthia and I headed over to Montague harbor for our tour. It was a dramatic evening with a blood red sunset, clouds in the sky and the occasional lightning strike off on the horizon. Our guide, Juan (from Chile), seemed untroubled by the lightning so I didn’t worry.

We headed off around 8:30pm with Juan and a couple from Vancouver who were in a double kayak, though Cynthia and I each had our own. As soon as we rounded the corner of Parker island, we started to see the bioluminescence. It was such a dramatic couple of hours! The plankton (they are what cause the under water luminescence) were putting on a show in the water while the lightning decorated the sky. We could see the luminescence by moving our kayak around or watching fish swim. We had a couple of rain showers, to go with the lightning and thunder, and the raindrops luminesced as they hit the water! We could hear seals on the nearby rocks. It was a truly magical evening capped by a big piece of Cynthia’s homemade blackberry pie when we got back around 11pm. John missed nighttime pie as he was already asleep – you snooze, you lose!

What a birthday! – hiking, biking, and kayaking as well as a happy birthday by a humpback whale, being cooked for by my husband and my childhood best friend, and having a light show both in the water and the sky. I recommend this as a great way to celebrate when turning any age!

Just one additional note. We did not try to photograph the bioluminescence on our tour since Juan said it usually isn’t successful. However, our friend Rachelle, who owns the Sturdies Bay Bakery here on the island and is the biggest whale aficionado that we know and is also featured on the front of the Galiano map, showed us a video she took a couple of nights ago.

She had texted John about the imminent arrival of the J-Pod whales on Wednesday night around midnight. The J-pod are the “resident” killer whales, who are fish eaters dining primarily on chinook salmon. They are quite different from the “transients” or Biggs killer whales who are mammal eaters and attack seals, sea lions, and porpoises. So Rachelle texted John that J-pod would be here Wednesday around midnight but John saw it would be late so didn’t tell me and didn’t stay up. We saw Rachelle yesterday and she showed us this video of what she saw at 12:20am. The best portion of the video is from about 28 seconds to 1 minute but the soundtrack goes for awhile if you’ve never heard killer whales (be sure to turn up your volume). I have been kicking myself that we did not see this spectacle of bioluminescent killer whales. I’m pretty sure this was a once a decade sighting. Good for you Rachelle!

And NEWS FLASH: Daystar Market has been saved, purchased by a local woman who has worked at the grocery over the years. We are thrilled that we won’t lose access to the wonderful produce and other products we’ve relied upon for the last three summers.

I’m back in Berkeley as of this coming Monday afternoon so this Galiano summer is coming to a close. We are planning our last kayak adventure tomorrow. Wish us luck as we will attempt a slightly dangerous route through Porlier Pass at the north of the island.

I look forward to seeing all of my Bay Area friends soon and will miss my Galiano friends until I’m back next spring!