May 3, 2016

When travelling to Newfoundland and Labrador, a day spent on the water is almost a rite of passage. Set sail from Bay Bulls harbour and witness the world’s largest concentration of humpback whales and a plethora of sea birds and Atlantic Puffins feeding in Canada’s coastal waters.

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We joined O’Brien’s Boat Tours in Bay Bulls, Newfoundland for their very first tour for 2016 season.

We first went to get our tickets at their offices/gift shop just across the harbour and after we took photos with the crew and the Captain,we were ready to sail.

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It was a sunny day but the cold wind was bone chilling so despite 3 layers of coat, we still felt the chill while at sea.

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At Witless Bay we watched in awe at the huge number of birds that the reserve contained . It has North America’s largest Atlantic puffin colony of more than 260,000 pairs of the province’s official bird which nest here during the late spring and summer.Seabirds generally spend most of the year at sea and only return to land from May to August to breed and raise their young. For the most part, public observation of their activities must be done from boats and we were thankful we chose O ‘Brien’s for this tour.Mr Joe O’Brien was so excited informing us that a whale has been spotted in the harbour and we were quite lucky since whales normally appear only in Mid June to July.

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We went crazy taking photos of the whale and the birds and these photos are just some of the hundreds we took on the tour.

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Check out Betty’s full blog post with more pictures and videos here.