Monday 17th September 2012 ­ Tadoussac - Minke Whales Ahoy! -5hrs BST

Apart from the assembled throng waiting to board the Grand Flueve we discovered that there were at least another 200 on board and blow me down if instead of heading straight out into the St Lawrence estuary we headed upstream for 20 minutes and picked up another 100 or so passengers!  Still worse was to come!!  We had a marine biologist on board who promised to commentate in French and English – well if I don’t think I heard more than a couple of dozen words of English in the next two hours!!  This made spotting the whales somewhatdifficult since it was hard enough to see through and over 500 other peoplecrowded at the rails of the observation deck without trying to pick out ‘whales at 3.00 o’clock’ in French in fact you were more likely to get bowled over as the ‘herd’ lurched from one side of the boat to the other!!

I should point out that the ship was designed to take this number of people but it didn’t make for easy whale watching – I would have much preferred the comfort of a Zodiac!!

In the end I decided to stand at the opposite rail and wait for the boat to turn.  By the time our not so bilingual French Marine Biologist had explained in voluble French that the whales were swimming under or in front of the boat I had my 18-inch lens at its full extent and arms akimbo!! 

So in spite of the adversity I did manage to get some good photos of Minke Whales – of which about 6 were feeding amongst some 60 or so Grey Seals all feeding off the fish brought to the surface by the whales.  An enjoyable afternoon doing one of my favourite things these days – wildlife photography - although as you guessed we were late back to the ship by over 30 minutes – not that it mattered since the ship was staying overnight in Port Saguenay.