PORT HASTINGS – She almost missed it. A flash of fin, a hint of bulk breaching the water’s surface. By the time Mary Hankey looked up, the first leap was already ending – a splash, the tail end of the whale and cameras pointing everywhere but at it.
“We were too busy talking,” she said, referring to the three other watchers she met on the shoreline on the Cape Breton side of the Canso Causeway July 24. “The cameras weren’t up to our eyes.”
That changed quickly.
Hankey had arrived near the lighthouse and the end of the locks. After waiting about an hour, she and the others saw the first breach slip past them. Then, at roughly 7:30 a.m., the orca came again. This time, Hankey was ready.
For about five seconds, the whale rose almost vertically from the Strait of Canso, turned through the air and fell back into the water. Hankey held down the shutter of her Nikon D500, its Tamron 150-600 mm lens extended as far as it would go. She captured nine frames, from the moment the orca cleared the surface to its splashdown.
Hankey later returned with her granddaughter, who also saw the whale. By then, it was slapping its tail repeatedly against the water – about 20 times in succession, she recalled. “She was pretty thrilled about that.”
It was not, strictly speaking, Hankey’s first orca.
“The only time I had ever seen one before was about 35 years ago in Florida,” she told The Journal. “And I don’t count that because it was SeaWorld.”
Indeed, this was something else entirely. Hankey lives in Lexington, about five kilometres from the causeway. Raised in Red Cove, near Cape Smokey, she returned to Cape Breton with her husband after they retired, following years in New Glasgow. Her working life included jobs at the former vocational school and Mulgrave Road Theatre. Wildlife photography grew from a longstanding interest in what moves through the Strait.
“We’re always at the causeway,” she said of herself and a fellow birder. “We have a shared love of that.”
A member of the Nova Scotia Bird Society, Hankey participates in the annual Christmas Bird Count – overseen by Birds Canada in partnership with the National Audubon Society – and has helped survey chimney swifts in Mabou. At the causeway, she’s seen humpback whales, leatherback turtles, a thresher shark and, sometimes, dozens of eagles waiting in nearby trees.
None of which is surprising, said Tonya Wimmer, co-executive director of the Marine Animal Response Society (MARS), who noted that the Strait was once an important migratory corridor. The causeway’s opening in 1955 did not erase the routes followed by fish and other animals, or by the larger predators drawn to them.
Still, orca reports are uncommon along Nova Scotia’s coast, Wimmer said. Solitary animals are not necessarily unusual for the species, but finding one in this particular location made the sighting remarkable.
Based on the footage MARS reviewed, the whale appeared healthy and showed no obvious signs of distress. The greater concern was human attention.
Wimmer urged people to watch from shore and reminded boaters that federal rules prohibit approaching whales within 100 metres. Curious marine mammals may approach vessels, she said, but people should not encourage that behaviour. Engagement can cause an animal to remain in an area longer than it otherwise would and expose it to dangers, including propeller strikes.
“At this point, it’s mostly let it do its thing,” Wimmer told The Journal, adding that the hope was it would eventually turn around and continue on its way.
Hankey’s photographs, meanwhile, have travelled widely. MARS shared one with its public advisory, media outlets contacted her and unfamiliar names began appearing among her Facebook friend requests.
She had normally limited her photographs to friends. This time, knowing how many people wanted to see the visitor, she made them public. But the attention was secondary to the moment – five seconds during which a familiar stretch of water became something extraordinary.
“It wasn’t until afterwards that you thought, ‘Oh, God, did I just see through the viewfinder what I thought I just saw?’” Hankey said.
She almost missed it. The photographs made sure others did not.
