Live & Learn

Everyone else in the van is well equipped. There's Arlene - clattering with camera equipment and a five-year veteran of Snow's tours - and Carolyn and Judy from Britain, who met and bonded years ago over a disastrous tour run by "a con artist” out of Trinity Bay. The two mutinying women had sought out Snow on their last day in Newfoundland after a frustrating week of sighting nothing but ospreys and kittiwakes. He motored them out past St. John's Narrows smack into their first humpback. "We wept,” recalls Judy.

I wonder at this. So far, my lack of weather-appropriate clothing has helped keep me from drifting into the dreamy reveries that whales, for some reason, inspire in even the most soul-hardened among us. The moment I start to feel soppy gazing at Arlene's countless photos of gambolling humpbacks and orcas, a cold wind snaps me back to reality. It's a hard coast, after all, a place where an unexpected fog or a particularly violent gale can flick the switch between life and death. That's the reality of nature, which whales, intelligent and magnificent though they might be, partake of wholeheartedly.

Snow spends much of the drive up the Labrador highway describing the rapacity of orcas. "They're called the wolves of the sea, but really, they're more like cats,” he reflects. "They play. I've seen them tossing seals into the air for fun.” When we reach Battle Harbour, he tells us, there awaits a dolphin fin that he and his friend Mike scooped out of the water after - not to put too fine a point on it - watching orcas tear its owner apart.

Still, the orcas are Arlene's favourite. She describes herself as a whale enthusiast, but the locals in Battle Harbour, she confesses, know her by another name: the Crazy Whale Lady. I notice this quality manifesting itself on our first morning out on the water. I arrive on the dock bundled in an array of coldweather gear Arlene has loaned me and find this hitherto gentle, soft-spoken woman arguing with the boat driver, Kirby Pye, who is reluctant to set off. He explains that the Battle Harbour kitchen staff has not yet finished packing our picnic lunch.

We've had a report of orcas just a few kilometres out to sea, and Arlene is having none of it. "We'll come back for it,” she says, practically wrestling Pye into his boat. "Come on, let's go, let's go.”

The day is grey and windswept, the choppy water gaining vigour the farther we bound out to sea. I hold onto the bench beneath me with both hands to keep from flying off.

"There!” shouts Pye, and everyone freezes. "One o'clock.”

I peer into the seething grey horizon and see nothing but breakers. "They're coming right for us,” says Snow.

The situation suddenly strikes me as ominous. The middle of the ocean, the furious waves, the solemn declaration: "They're coming right for us.” Then I see what is coming right for us. Dorsals. Huge, black exclamation points knifing through the waves.

"I'm a little bit scared,” I hear myself remark.

Then we are surrounded by huge, glistening backs and dorsals. We jump to our feet, desperately trying to focus our cameras and keep our balance in the lurching boat.

"It's a mother and baby,” says a beaming Arlene as two orcas, with uncanny grace, rise out of the water alongside us to breathe.

"And two males,” says Snow, examining more approaching dorsals. "I've seen one of these guys before - with the wonky fin.”

From listening to Snow and Arlene confer over photographs, I know that orca dorsals, if you know what to look for, are nearly as distinguishable from one another as human faces. The same goes for humpback flukes. Snow has a biology background and uses the tours to gather data for Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and other marine research institutions. The dolphin fin at Battle Harbour is being kept on ice for him, as it will provide, he tells us, a valuable tissue sample to DFO. He and Arlene take endless photographs, with the aim of identifying individual whales to provide an eventual census of the North Atlantic orca and humpback populations. Compared with places like British Columbia, says Snow, orca research off the Labrador coast is in its infancy. "Out in B.C.,” he explains, "they're studying what kind of dialect the different orca pods are speaking to one another. Here, we're still asking questions like: How many orcas are there, anyway?”