As a scuba diver and underwater videographer based in Barkley Sound, Peter Mieras has seen some eye-catching creatures in his career. Mieras and his wife, Kathy Johnson, operate Rendezvous Dive Adventures in Rainy Bay, down the Alberni Inlet near Kildonan. They often see seals, sea lions and whales feeding in their bay.
In early November Mieras had his first-ever closeup encounter with a humpback whale—and it wasn't from a whalewatching boat.
"As I was checking our anchor line from our dock, a humpback whale swam by me, which was the first time in 20 years and thousands of dives that this happened," he said.
Just when he thought his breathtaking encounter was once in a lifetime, Mother Nature one-upped him a week later.
"While we have regular visits in the bay with sea lions, humpback whales and anchovy, this encounter or hunting effort lasted for nearly two hours," Mieras said.
He has been filming from his dock with an Insta360 X4 camera, which takes 360-degree video. He was testing to see if he could use an old fishing rod to raise the camera from the ocean when it slipped off the line and fell to a depth of 30 feet. "As I was testing it at the end of the dock the fishing line broke and the camera sank," Mieras explained.
The camera had a weight on it to keep it steady, and that kept it upright when it landed on the ocean floor. "I wanted to dive and get it up but then the anchovy and sea lions started to arrive so I did not want to go into the water in order not to disturb their behaviour.
"The camera still had an hour of battery life in it and kept recording. After another 25 minutes the whale showed up."
Mieras said he didn't expect much when he finally retrieved the camera. "I picked the camera up the next day and downloaded the images and could not believe what I got."
He had video of all the action, including clear shots of the whale appearing. He put together his two best clips and posted a minute-long video on social media as well as his YouTube channel.
The video clips shows a "bait ball" of anchovy tightening up before the hulk of the humpback swims into view from the left and toward the fish. When schools of fish are threatened by a predator, they form into a tight ball often called a "bait ball." The fish will move almost as one unit in a defensive move, so fewer fish are exposed to the predators.
The fish in Mieras's video quickly scattered when the whale swam through the centre of the sphere.
Mieras is known for numerous underwater filming projects, among them a short film that debuted in 2016 called I Am Salmon, that he created with members of the Tseshaht First Nation.
Mieras had been using the 360-degree camera for a project featured on the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Sir John Franklin when it docked in Port Alberni in October. Mieras's 360-degree film was projected onto the interior of a small dome, giving visitors the feeling of being underwater.
A clip of the recent whale footage that Mieras posted on social media gained a lot of interest.
"This is the third time in 20 years of living here that we had all this action literally right off the dock...seals and sea lions were swimming and hunting right between our dock and shore in five feet of water."
Mieras said he doesn't know what is bringing increased marine mammal activity to Rainy Bay. "Maybe the storms blow in a lot of anchovy," he said.
Mieras has made thousands of dives all over the world, but says his encounters with humpback whales this month have been a highlight. "I know that 2024 is the Year of the Dragon but for me it is the year of the humpback whale."
