Steps 30,053 9.6 Miles
Today’s walk is accurately rated as easy to moderate in difficulty, with an estimated 2 to 4 hours of traveling.
This section includes woods walking, tramping across sea meadows, and taking in cliff edge views of the Witless Bay Seabird Ecological Reserve opposite Burnt Cove and the rugged coastline to the south, where we are headed.
We see and even hear the blowing spouts of giant whales all day long. Two heavily loaded whale watching/ seabird nesting tour boats passed us motoring their way over to a group of a dozen humpback whales who have been feeding on a jut of land south of us for close to a month now.
Newfoundland and Labrador has the largest population of feeding Humpbacks in the world. Humpbacks spend the winter months in the Caribbean and migrate north to the Newfoundland and Labrador coast during April and stay until October.
From Voklee “This species is know to catch fish using a bubble net feeding technique. This is where a number of humpbacks encircle a school of fish whilst blowing air bubbles. The circle grows ever tighter forcing the fish into a small area when the whales suddenly swim upwards through the fish catching thousands in one mouthful.”
We passed a impressive waterfall tumbling over red sandstone cliffs at Big Cove.