At the northern end of Vancouver Island, Port Hardy is a small town with a clear sense of community.
Photographs of local high school graduates hang proudly from lampposts through the centre of town, each student individually celebrated. It’s a small detail that tells you a lot about the place.
But while Port Hardy itself may be small, the wilderness on its doorstep is anything but.
The town provides access to some extraordinary wildlife experiences, with the surrounding waters and forests home to sea otters, whales, bald eagles, black bears and grizzlies.
Over two consecutive days, I headed out with two Indigenous-owned operators on two very different wildlife adventures.
The first, with Coastal Rainforest Safaris, was ostensibly in search of sea otters and whales but delivered an astonishing variety of wildlife.
The second, Sea Wolf Adventures‘ Grizzly Bears of the Wild, took us across to the mainland, specifically Knight Inlet and Glendale Cove with one primary objective: finding grizzly bears.
Between them, we saw sea otters, Steller sea lions, seals, bald eagles, guillemots, humpback whales, seven grizzly bears and a black bear.
Just as importantly, our Indigenous guides provided an insight into a coastline where wildlife, landscape and thousands of years of human history are closely connected.
So Many Sea Otters We Couldn’t Stop For Them All
As we set off from Port Hardy with Coastal Rainforest Safaris, our guide gave us a simple instruction: keep your eyes peeled and let him know if you spot anything.
There was one caveat. We wouldn’t be able to stop for every sea otter.
Having never seen a sea otter before, this was quite a statement. The implication that we might see so many of an animal I’d travelled halfway around the world hoping to encounter that stopping for each one simply wasn’t practical immediately raised expectations.
It turned out he wasn’t exaggerating.
We saw sea otters again and again throughout the day, sometimes alone and sometimes gathered together, floating on their backs in the waters around northern Vancouver Island.
But the sea otters were only part of it. The sheer quantity and variety of wildlife we encountered on this single tour was staggering.
There were Steller sea lions, seals and bald eagles, guillemots around the rocky coastline and humpback whales. One humpback put on a particularly memorable display, repeatedly lifting its head before bringing its chin down against the surface in a behaviour known as chin slapping.
It was the accumulation of encounters that made the day exceptional. There was rarely a feeling that we were travelling somewhere in order to see wildlife. Wildlife was simply all around us.
The scenery didn’t hurt either. We were extraordinarily fortunate with blue skies, calm water and the forested islands of northern Vancouver Island providing the backdrop.
Our Indigenous guides also shared stories about the history and people of the region as we travelled.
One of the most interesting stops was Hope Island, where the family of one of our guides originated. Hearing about a place to which our guide had a personal and ancestral connection made it feel very different from simply being shown another beautiful island. We weren’t just travelling through spectacular scenery, but through people’s traditional territories and hearing some of their stories from the people themselves.
Combine that with the weather, scenery and extraordinary amount of wildlife and it would have been difficult to top the day.
Fortunately, the following day’s tour gave it a very good try.
A bald eagle in Glendale Cove
In Search Of Grizzlies In Knight Inlet
The next morning I joined Sea Wolf Adventures’ Grizzly Bears of the Wild tour, departing from Port McNeill, around half an hour south of Port Hardy.
This was a very different boat and a different style of adventure.
Rather than the smaller, faster open boat used for our sea otter trip, Sea Wolf’s larger vessel offered a comfortable enclosed cabin as well as a large outdoor deck at the stern. Passengers could choose to sit inside or outside, moving between the two when wildlife appeared.
The journey from Port McNeill to Glendale Cove in Knight Inlet took around two hours, with whale watching and sea otter spotting stops along the way.
Marine wildlife, however, was the bonus on this particular trip. The bears were the reason we were here.
And we didn’t even have to wait until Glendale Cove to find them.
As we travelled through Knight Inlet, we spotted a male and female grizzly before reaching the cove itself.
Once at Glendale Cove, we transferred from the larger boat into a flat-bottomed skiff, much better suited to slowly exploring the shallow waters and shoreline in search of bears.
We were exceptionally lucky.
On the foreshore, we watched a mother grizzly with two cubs. On the opposite side of the cove, another mother appeared with a cub. In total, we spent around two hours exploring Glendale Cove and saw seven grizzly bears during the day’s excursion.
And the wildlife hadn’t finished with us yet.
During the return journey, we spotted a black bear on the shoreline, adding another species to an already remarkable couple of days.
The Stories Behind The Landscape
As with Coastal Rainforest Safaris, the Sea Wolf experience wasn’t limited to finding animals.
Our Indigenous guides provided plenty of background about traditional life in the region and the relationship between the people and the land and waters through which we were travelling.
One particularly memorable stop was beside pictographs painted onto rocks along the coastline. Our guides explained the stories behind the images, including one they told us depicts the arrival of the first European ships in the area.
Pictographs made with red ochre.
Seeing that history recorded on the rock while hearing its meaning explained by Indigenous guides whose people have lived in these territories for generations added another dimension to the journey.
It’s an important part of what distinguishes both experiences.
Coastal Rainforest Safaris and Sea Wolf Adventures are Indigenous owned and while travellers may initially book because they want to see sea otters, whales or grizzly bears, the cultural interpretation means they leave having learnt considerably more about the places they’ve spent the day exploring.
Which Tour Should Your Clients Choose?
For wildlife-loving clients visiting northern Vancouver Island, my answer would be simple: if they have the time, do both.
They are sufficiently different that one doesn’t replicate the other.
Coastal Rainforest Safaris’ Sea Otter and Whale Watching tour is about the sheer variety of marine and coastal wildlife.
The smaller open boat makes the journey itself part of the adventure and, on our day at least, there seemed to be something to see almost everywhere we looked.
Sea Wolf Adventures’ Grizzly Bears of the Wild is a longer, more comfortable journey with a much more specific objective.
Clients can sit inside or outside for the journey across to Knight Inlet before transferring to the flat-bottomed skiff at Glendale Cove for the dedicated bear-viewing portion of the day.
For wildlife lovers short on time who particularly want the opportunity to see grizzlies, it offers a practical way of experiencing Knight Inlet as a day trip while staying on northern Vancouver Island.
There is, of course, an important caveat with any genuine wildlife experience: sightings are never guaranteed. We were extraordinarily fortunate. The weather was warm and sunny and we encountered seven grizzlies during our Sea Wolf excursion. Another day can deliver an entirely different experience.
For clients whose primary reason for travelling to the region is grizzly bears and who want significantly more time observing them, I’d recommend staying at Knight Inlet Lodge in Glendale Cove itself. A multi-night stay provides considerably more opportunities for bear viewing and allows guests to experience the area at a much slower pace.
But for clients who want to pack as much wildlife as possible into a relatively short stay, two days in the Port Hardy area can deliver an extraordinary introduction to northern Vancouver Island.
Sea otters floating offshore, humpbacks breaking the surface, eagles overhead, Indigenous stories connected to the landscape and grizzly bears feeding along the shoreline of Knight Inlet.
For wildlife-loving clients, that’s a pretty compelling reason to keep driving north.
