The Whale Sighting

On September 9, 2012 I took a school trip to Bamfield, British Columbia, Canada. The purpose of the trip was to get 9th grade students educated about the vast biodiversity in the Pacific Ocean. On the first day we arrived on a highway coach at 10:00 pm (two hours behind schedule). We only had time to unpack and settle into our dorms for the night. The very next day the thought of riding a ship way out into the ocean reverberated through my group mates as it was all that I wanted to talk about. The labs that we had to conquer leading up to the voyage engulfed me in boredom as the only though that was on my and other group mates mind was the thought of riding the ship out to sea. Evening finally struck across Barkley Sound and we walked down to the dock to a large boat that said Motor Vessel or MV Alta. We put our sopping orange life vests on and then boarded the vessel. The vest had a pungent smell of wet socks sneaking into our noses. We finally sat down and then the captain threw away the docking ropes and then we were off. The white ship itself had a small wheelhouse but a large deck and a big, tall mast but no sail. By the time we had reached the mouth of Bamfield Inlet and proceeded out to the vast Barkley Sound. A splash of water caught my eye.  And the lady that was on the boat cried out "look at the whale", "it's a humpback". The whale had since disappeared beneath the waves but a minute later we saw it's fluke emerge from the cold ocean. It was breathtaking today I still have that exact image of that whales ravishing fluke and the orange evening sky behind it. I think everybody on that ship could agree that the image of the whale will forever be embedded in our minds.