Quebec in the news
National Post
Published Thursday, August 09, 2007 7:45 AM by Nicole_Feenstra
Waking up to the sound of whales
SHORES OF THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER, QUE. - As my family sat around a campfire, roasting marshmallows and watching a perfect grapefruit moon rising in the sky, its beam of light slicing through the St. Lawrence River, over the crackle of fire came another sound: whales blowing in the river just feet from our site.
Earlier, as we ate dinner on the silver and tangerine-tinged rocks on the banks of the St. Lawrence, we watched whales parade by in the river. There were so many -- mostly minke and fin -- that we stopped pointing them out after a while.
The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight streaked through the open sky, we climbed out of our sleeping bags, unzipped the tent and watched the whales as we sipped coffee and ate our cereal.
This campsite, called Mer et Monde, is a few hours east of Quebec City and less than half-an-hour past Tadoussac, a popular tourist destination at the mouth of the Saguenay Fjord and the St. Lawrence where travellers flock to take whale-watching tours.
When I called to book the camping spot, I asked about whale-watching trips. The woman on the other end of the line said, "You won't need to book any tours -- you'll wake up to the sound of whales."
When we arrived, the stress of setting up a tent (my family is new to camping) was instantly calmed by hours spent doing nothing more than sitting on the rocks on the edge of the river marvelling at the whales as they dove in and out of the water.
My brother-in-law Lex Burger, who was camping next door with his family, called it the "Highway 401 of whales." His family stayed longer than us and said one night the whales were just blowing and blowing all night long.
This region is home to the minke, fin, humpback, beluga and blue whales. The belugas are protected here and are the only whales that live all year long in this area. The blue whales, the biggest of the marine mammals (these giants of the sea weigh 80 to 135 tonnes and measure 21 to 30 metres), are rare, and this is one of the only places where they can be spotted so close to land.
The whales come here in vast numbers for the quantity of food. There is no bad time to see whales -- you can spot them in the St. Lawrence at all hours because they feed continuously.
Mer et Monde is a rustic camping experience. There are only 25 sites; it runs on solar energy; there are no showers or drinkable water, only brown dish-washing water that comes by gravity from the river. The owners here also prefer a more natural way of viewing the whales up close and run kayaking trips from the campground -- an alternative to the numerous Zodiaks and big cruisers in these parts.
The idea of the kayaking is to let the whales come to you --and they do, close up.
"It is very meditative," sighs Cory Labrecque, a 30-year-old Montrealer, as he emerges from a four-hour afternoon kayak trip. "You feel it's invasive but the whales seem very pleased we were around."
Tammy Labrecque, 32, on the same trip from Montreal, describes the kayaking as surreal. "You think you are being brave-- two times a fin whale came five to 10 feet away from us. You lose your breath, you really do. You don't understand the size of the whale until you see it that close. At one point, there was a fin whale that was 18 to 20 metres in size and you could see all the features of the face."
The St. Lawrence is very cold and dark and kayakers do not get any advance notice the whales are there, they just pop up.
The privately run camp ground charges only $20 per night to camp so close to the whales and about $50 for four hours in the kayak. They also run a "sound and light" evening kayak trip where they use a hydrophone -- a microphone is dropped into the water to hear the whales' songs.
This year has been good for whale spotting. "We have seen so many since the beginning of the summer, it's crazy," says Christine Hersberger, who manages the camp site. Last summer, they were lucky enough to see blue whales.
As a bonus, there are plenty of porpoises, dolphins and seals all around the St. Lawrence as well.
"We saw 150 porpoises around the kayak last night," says Mathieu Dupuis, chief guide at the site. He has seen whales as close as one foot from the boat. As we are talking on the rocks, he points out a beluga, fin, minke and, he is sure, a humpback, all within minutes.
In my family, our children are too young to go on the kayaks, so we had planned some larger boat rides from Tadoussac before we arrived, not realizing they were slightly redundant. We did, though, see a minke whale in full breach -- at least half-a-dozen times -- during a trip along the Saguenay Fjord and dozens of species on a whale-watching tour, including two humpback whales diving nearby as their tails rose out of the water.
Even with all that, it was hard to beat waking and falling asleep to the sound of whales.
jsmyth@nationalpost.com
Photo: Whale watching on the St. Lawrence/CanWest News Service.
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