Shortly after our last blog, Nova Scotia suffered a massive “thousand year” flooding event on the 21st of July. Although Down North Cape Breton and Unama’kik itself were largely spared from the flooding, we still received a dramatic amount of wind, rain, and warm ocean water. The fluctuating and extreme weather throughout July, which has been a happening worldwide, has influenced our whale sightings leading to an “all or nothing” experience. July has had some fabulous days filled with many marine mammals, but there have been many days with not a whale in sight.
Overall, our minke and harbour porpoise sightings increased, while our pilot whale sightings were significantly down. There were also more right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the local seal population seems to be increasing, which is good because there have been more shark sightings in the area. There were not a lot of northern gannets (avian flu) and cormorants, but there were plenty of guillemots, eagles and gulls along the coast.
With our province having faced devastating forest fires earlier in the year, followed by tragic floods, we are grateful to be able to tour in our remote part of the world, and thankful for everyone who travelled Down North to tour with us
All photographs © Cheryl Fraser.
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