Snorkelling ‘seals’ the deal in Nanaimo
Adventure offers a chance to come face-to-face with clever creatures
NANAIMO, B.C. — Lesson learned: Always listen carefully to the captain.
In our excitement to snorkel with seals in the Georgia Strait, our group of four missed Ed Singer’s instructions to swim through a narrow pass between rocks and around to the ocean-side of a rocky crescent of land that was like Miami Beach for the fat and furry mammals.
“They like to suntan,” jokes Singer, the captain of the Calla C and owner of Sundown Diving, who has run snorkelling and scuba-diving expeditions out of this Vancouver Island city for 30 years. “Their fins are the only part that gets cold. You see them on their backs getting their fins warm. The rest of them is blubber.”
We are also well-insulated from the 13 C water, squeezed like sausages into a seven-milli-metrethick neoprene wetsuit with a hood. We wear another half suit on top of that, and put neoprene boots and mitts on before we hit the water.
When we make our way out of Nanaimo Harbour, past Newcastle Island and out Departure Bay, seaplanes take off and B.C. ferries glide by. Snake Island comes into view within 15 minutes, its sandstone tip eroded by saltwater to create swooping curves and honeycomb formations similar to the neighbouring Malaspina galleries on Gabriola Island. A sea otter scampers up a cliff into the meadow above, while cormorants congregate on rocky outcrops.
The island, an uninhabited bird sanctuary, got its name from a Snuneymuxw legend about a
young woman who, against custom, ate too many ferns and was banished to the island where she gave birth to snakes. She was rescued by her parents, leaving the serpents behind.
“So far as I know, there are no snakes on the island at all,” Singer reassures us.
The captain steers the boat to the back of a wedge-shaped bay and searches for the mooring buoy. Off to the east side of the island are two wrecks in 40 metres of water, sunk in 1997 and 2001, where Singer takes divers on expeditions. It is also a prime salmon fishing spot, adds Singer, the son of a commercial fisherman born on Haida Gwaii.
One by one we plop over the side and I get a jolt as cold water seeps into the neoprene boots and mitts. Face down, I start floating and lazily kicking my way over to the gap, entranced by the purple and orange starfish, crabs, perch, white anemones and bright-green seaweed interspersed with brownish kelp six metres below. Despite craning my neck and sweeping the water from side to side, no seals come into view.
At the gap, I decide not to swim through the belly-scraping rocks and turn into the protected bay and head toward the beach, which is what they call a haul out, or rest stop, according to Martin Haulena, the head veterinarian for the Vancouver Aquarium.
Over the phone, he tells me later that harbour seals are solitary creatures and pups only stay with their mothers for four weeks and never interact again. Like a lot of mammalian species, they are quite inquisitive.
“Seals are fairly bright,” Haulena confirms. “They’re dog smart.”
When I flip over to float on my back, fins in the air, I get more attention. Singer says the seals love the man-made flippers and he’s had them nibble on the tips when he’s diving.
In my peripheral vision, I see a seal bobbing on the surface, eyeing me from a safe distance. On the beach, the seals are skittish, sliding in and jumping out of the water, but I can’t get my mask submerged fast enough to catch one in action.
“They already know you’re not a killer whale, so they’re pretty sure they’re better off in the water,” Haulena says, adding seals can stay underwater for 15 to 20 minutes.
I finally come mask-to-face with a milky white specimen more than a metre long with grey splotches on its rotund body. Time slows as the seal and I stare at each other for a good 30 seconds, one huge black eye riveted to my two blue ones. Haulena confirms a seal’s oversized peepers have a “binocular, 3D effect” that allow them to see very well in deep, dark water.
The seal is a little more than a metre away, and absolutely still, just hanging with me in the shallows near the beach. As I struggle to stay motionless in the current, it slips away. After that, I see one more glide by underwater and many more popping to the surface like jack-in-the-boxes, with whiskers, eyes and ears on high alert. On the beach, a juvenile — the females calved in July — swats another young seal in the head with its flipper. The victim tries to retaliate, but an adult intervenes, blocking the shot with a big flipper. Everyone goes back to sleep.
Back on the boat, Singer says a group of 10 seals came off the ocean side of the beach and through the rocks behind us as we swam toward the bay side of the beach. Snorkeller Josh Vince, who was on a 10th-anniversary trip to Vancouver Island with his wife, Cailin, happened to be hanging out at the gap when he saw two dart past like hairy torpedoes, one underneath him and one just inches from his head.
“You all had your faces in the water, but they were all around you,” says deckhand Mark Bright.
He and Singer headed to the outer beach to wait for us, but when we didn’t show, they headed back to the mooring. If we had just listened to the captain, we would have seen more seal action.
We make our way back to port, happy with our expedition anyway, and grateful for the cup of tomato soup the captain pours from a thermos.