Cliff-jumping on Bay of Fundy!

Although there are many ways for visitors to get to know our Bay, I'm always a big proponent of reaching out to touch the Bay of Fundy by kayaking it, walking its low tide beaches, or even hanging off the edge of its cliffs. This week I spend the day at Cape Enrage on the New Brunswick side of the bay filming the next episode of our Bay of Fundy Travel Show for YouTube.

Cape Enrage is a fun cliffside spot about one hour south of Moncton (half way between the famous Hopewell Rocks and Fundy National Park). The site consists of a heritage lighthouse, lightkeeper's cafe, beach full of huge tree trunk fossils and a long, broad rappelling cliff.

I 'had to' rappell down the cliff-face 6 times (see little blue me on the cliff in the pic) to get all the shots I needed. Even if you don't think heights are you thing, I encourage you to give it a try. It's only 140 feet high and it's extremely well organized and monitored. Oh, and it's a lot like eating chips: once you start you'll want more!!

I'll post the Cape Enrage episode here once its edits are complete! in the meantime, feel free to pop over to our youtube.com/fundybay channel to watch our first 11 episodes.

Our Bay on CNN

Just a quick footnote to my last post: that CBC segment about Bay of Fundy in the New7Wonders of Nature campaign made it also to CNN's website....check it out!

Celebrity guest visits Bay of Fundy!

Yesterday I was pleased to welcome a celebrity guest to the upper Bay of Fundy: world-renowned curler and television personality, Colleen Jones. Colleen is a reporter with CBC TV and was accompanied on her visit by cameraman Brian.

They're producing a feature on the Bay of Fundy's candidacy in the New7Wonders of Nature campaign. Colleen was smitten with this part of the Five Islands (Nova Scotia) are of the Fundy coast and spent several hours exploring by boat (at high tide) and on foot (at low tide - pictured here).

Here are a few images (used with permission) of the crew walking the ocean floor at Five Islands Provincial Park with Sue, a park interpreter. At least we didn't have to worry about Colleen walking on the slick Fundy mud - she's quite accustomed to slippery ice surfaces!

The feature is set to air on CBC TV Newsnow repeatedly through the day on Monday (starting at 7 am) as well as during the main evening news on Monday...in case you'd like to tune in!

Amazing whale watch photo!

As I noted it my last blog post it's truly been an amazing year for whale watching in Bay of Fundy. Whale watching is a great outdoor adventure activity for all ages. Here in Bay of Fundy, we've got some strict guidelines for our whale watch companies about what they can and cannot do around whales. Good thing for telephoto lenses then!

The folks at Quoddy Link Marine whale watching in St Andrews, New Brunswick, sent along this amazing photo and note yesterday:

Here's a picture taken by one of our Marine Biologist guides: we were so blown away by this! It is a lunge-feeding Finback whale, and, if you look closely, you can see 2 seagulls in its mouth. We certainly hope the seagulls survived (the whale would not be able to eat them as Finbacks are baleen whales and you can see the baleen hanging from the whale’s upper jaw). See more photos and read more about this sighting on our blog.

Here's a bit more info about baleen from Wikipedia: baleen is a filtering structure in the mouth of most whales, which they use to feed by sieving small animals from large mouthfuls of seawater. Instead of teeth, these whales have rows of baleen plates in the upper jaw–flat, flexible plates with frayed edges, arranged in two parallel rows, looking like combs with thick hair at the end of each comb tooth. Baleen is not in fact composed of bone, but of the protein keratin, the same substance as hair, horn, scales, claws and nails. Baleen whales use these combs for filter feeding.