I was heading home after a long day at work when I got a call from my friend and fellow West Ender-she told me that there was a giant whale just off of the beach at English Bay and she was watching it while she spoke to me.  Due to the rush hour traffic the bus I was couldn’t pull over so I hopped out at a light and headed in the direction of the beach while texting Sara to inform her that our plans for the night had to be postponed for some very important Whale Tales work!

I reached the beach at English Bay and it was very obvious judging by the amount of people looking at the water that the whale was still close by.  Staring into the sunset I saw a blow followed by the back of a very large and very long Grey Whale swimming near the shore.

As I stood on the sand in the exact spot where my friends and I have jokingly looked for a Grey Whale for the past five years (since the last time a Grey was spotted in False Creek) I couldn’t really believe that it was actually happening.  I took a few pictures and then headed over to the Seawall as the whale looked to be swimming towards Second Beach.  The intervals between his blows were quite long and the water was quite shallow so I’m pretty sure he was feeding as he swam along our shores.

I met up with up my three friends on the wall just at the edge of Stanley Park and we watched the whale swim in various directions for about another half an hour.  It was a gorgeous night to watch an amazing creature and it was great to see so many others on the wall enjoying the rare visitor.  After a while we saw him take a shallow dive towards Siwash Rock and seeing a bit of his tail fluke was an excellent end to our surprise encounter! 

-Lindsay