Vancouver Islanders have a name for the few weeks in late summer when whales can be spotted from ships close to shore: humpback soup. Like a pot on the boil, the sea churns over this period with heaving, grey muscle, all popping and roiling and slapping the surface with barnacle-crusted flukes, so close you can hear the wind-tunnel roar of air being sucked wetly into gargantuan lungs. Whale-watching  normally a sedate activity  practically becomes an adrenaline sport, involving many unsteady springs from port to starboard and back again for a triumphant glimpse of a tail fin or a gut punch of lingering spray. Cetacean-spotting here offers rich pickings, but the Johnstone Strait  a narrow and, on the surface, completely unremarkable channel cleaving the northeast shore of Vancouver Island from craggy mainland British Columbia  is particularly notable for its quite high number of humpback sightings. But myriad other species call these shores home, among them galumphing, salt-crusted grizzlies, skulking black bears and rare fish-eating sea wolves, as well as dolphins, porpoises and cougars. Bald eagles also perch imperiously on the coniferous fringes, their white heads starkly contrasting with the green, feathery fronds. For Canadian wildlife, there are few better places  and for orca, there are few better places in the world. There are three kinds that ply the waters here. The vocal residents, which feast on the salmon that wash silvery life into the waterways every summer. The transients  seal-eating, sneaky and wolf-like in their pack behaviour, and mostly silent unless celebrating a meal. And the elusive and mysterious offshores, which ply deeper waters and are rarely seen. The only way in or out of this maze of waterways is by seaplane  a wide-angled, often wide-eyed perspective that misses the finer details  or by boat. On a small-ship cruise, all those finer details  and the essence of what this stretch of coast is about  come into focus. The journey always begins in Port McNeil, a picturesque community overlooking the water of the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, and from there on days are flexible and easy-going, taking the ship wherever the wind and the wildlife sightings might lead. Time seems to suddenly slow, dictated only by the regular turning of the tides. Occasionally if weather conditions kindly allow, the mighty sails can be unfurled and the engine can be switched off for a while, so the only sounds are just the puffing blows of cruising whales and the washing of the waves over their bows. 
