Brilliant white sea swallows, with their black caps and orange bills, dive for stickleback fish, tossing them into the air, and setting them up to swallow whole—head first.
It is the month of August and it is prime time for seeing shorebirds. We drift in our kayaks along the shore of Tern Island, entertained by the 6,000 hungry birds. A few paddle strokes fills the sky with a white cloud of flapping wings as they rise up in sheets. The birds’ agility in flight and precision when diving for food provides us with a continuous aerial spectacle. The sound of their cawing voices floods our ears. This flock is only a fraction of the 30,000 that make the banana-shaped barrier island at Kouchibouguac National Park, New Brunswick their home.
Tern Island has the largest common tern colony in eastern Canada and the second largest along the North American eastern seaboard. Results of an annual count suggest there are approximately 6600 tern nests in the Atlantic Canadian park. The common tern numbers have been declining in the Atlantic provinces since the middle of the century, primarily due to the tremendous increase in gull populations. The gulls compete with the terns for nesting habitat, usually winning, and prey heavily on tern chicks. But here on Kouchibouguac’s protected strands of islands, the terns are alive and well.
Kouchibouguac National Park is located on the northeast shore of New Brunswick in the Northumberland Strait of the Atlantic Ocean. Kouchibouguac was established as a reserve in 1969 and was given official nation- al park status in 1979. The 238 square kilometers of the Maritime Lowlands ecological region is 80 kilometres north of Moncton and 50 kilometres southeast of Miramichi. One of the characteristics of these rich fertile lowlands, making up the eastern half of New Brunswick, are rivers with tides that travel inland for many miles.A mix of deciduous leaf forest and boreal coniferous forest
surrounds the lowlands and is identified as an Acadian forest. The Maritime Lowlands is also known for its coastal sand dunes and extensive beaches—the main attraction at Kouchibouguac. This family-oriented park contains 35 kilometres of bike trails and 315 sites in their modern campground on the mainland.
Off the mainland there are three main barrier islands and a few tiny islands called Tern Island I and Tern Island II. Tern Island III has eroded down to a sandbar and this is where the terns and grey seals congregate.
Up to five hundred grey seals arrive in Kouchibouguac in June when the ice breaks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and stay until early November. They are the largest of the four species of seals living in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with males reaching 900 pounds and females up to 500 pounds.There are only a few places to see these uncommon seals called marine wolves for their night-time barking and howling. Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia is also a good place to see them where up to 10,000 have been known to winter. The entire Gulf of St. Lawrence has approximately 200,000, which is a small population compared to most species of seals. As special as this sight is, less than 1% of all park visitors venture off the mainland to these islands. This weekend with the help of a sea kayak touring company, Kayakouch Inc., my family and I have come to this little-known paddling destination to live with the terns and the seals and we have the place all to ourselves.
Owners, Victor Savoie and Nicole Daigle, base their trips from their kayak shop on Main Street of Saint-Louis-de-Kent, New Brunswick.Victor is the assistant head her- itage interpreter at Kouchibouguac National Park and Nicole is a national park interpreter. For three consecutive years Victor and Nicole have won the Savvy Traveller Award for their guided sea kayaking adventures in seal country. Most of Kayakouch’s customers opt for an early morning departure with a half-day tour of the Tern Islands and the grey seals. Only a handful choose our multi-day tour.
We begin our trip this morning by paddling eight kilometres down the Kouchibouguasis River from Kayakouch Outdoor Adventure Shop. At the end of our day, we will end up at a primitive campground at Pointe-a-Maxime located at the mouth of the Kouchibouguasis River, which means Little Sister of Kouchibouguac.The national park has set aside half a dozen campsites for paddlers with an outhouse, fire pit, and picnic table. All potable water and supplies must be boated in. Paddlers use these narrow Saint-Louis Lagoon.The wind has picked up to 35 knots so we stay put and call it an early day of paddling. Our evening trip out to the sandbar and the seals will have to wait until tomorrow. Victor checks his weather radio numerous times a day to get the latest weather conditions and plan the best time to see the seals.“Wind is practically the only factor for cancelling trips,”Victor tells us.“If it’s blowing more than twenty knots it’s a small craft advisory and unless paddlers are very experienced, a trip won’t go.”
We never paddle in more than five feet of water and in the summer the water temperature hovers between seventy and ninety degrees. The most the tide changes in Kouchibouguac is four feet, unlike in the Bay of Fundy where tides fluctuate as much as forty feet. Fog rarely forms on the lagoons so finding your way is nearly always possible with your naked eye. All these factors make Kouchibouguac a very comfortable and safe paddle for families.Victor assures us that early morning is usually the best time to paddle, with less wind, little boat traffic and the seals undisturbed.
I bring my children on kayak trips for many reasons. Every paddling experience opens another world of learning and the first in-camp activity is digging for soft-shell clams, which Victor secured a permit for. The kids excitedly try their hand at it hoping to make a contribution to supper. They crawl in the shallow water on all fours and shout with joy when they’ve found one.
“The trick is to look for two air holes in the sand,” Victor informs us. “You’ll find the clams about six inches underneath.” My 11-year-old daughter, Sierra, devises a way to plunge her index finger quickly into the hole and get a head start before the clam detects it is being harvested and starts to move away.
The Micmac First Nations people inhabited this area and fished these waters for 3,000 years. For over eight months of the year, they subsisted on four main types of food: shellfish, like these clams; marine mammals, like walruses and seals; bird eggs on the dunes; and fish, with the American Eel being their favourite. Only ten percent of the Micmac population survived the European diseases.Two hundred years later, the families of those who survived the measles and small pox were forced to leave when Kouchibouguac became a national park. Big Cove Reserve on the Richibucto River, eight kilometres south of the park, is New Brunswick’s largest native reserve with 2500 resident Micmacs.
For their next lesson,Victor shows the kids how to handle a jellyfish without being stung.Victor grabs the floating mass with his bare hand and flips it over into the palm of his other hand.
“As long as you only touch it with this tough inner part of your hand, you won’t get stung,” he tells them. He shows us where to insert our index finger so we can feel its harmless muscular mouth. He tells us some species of jellyfish in the Atlantic Maritime waters reach eight feet wide with thirty-metre long tentacles!
Lobster season just opened in New Brunswick. As we paddled along the mainland this morning, we stopped to watch the lobstermen unload their catch while the women sized the crawling grey-green crustaceans. Lobstering is still one of the main sources of economy in this Acadian region. One hundred and fifty families use the wharf in the park for the two short months the lobsters are in season and each boat can have up to 250 traps in them.
The traps are much more sophisticated than the phantom traps from years ago. Storms can render lobster traps lost at sea by moving them far from their original spots. New, coated metal traps have doors with biodegradable hinges that will decompose within a year, opening the traps if they become lost. Lobstermen also use Global Positioning Systems to help pinpoint their traps.
Lobsters are scavengers and are attracted to the bait in the traps. When another lobster enters the trap, the larger one will frequently eat the smaller one.The blood and scent trails from the cage, sending tasty messages to other lobsters that a good meal is available. In this way, the cannibal lobsters will eat forever if the traps aren’t retrieved.
“How much pain will they feel when you drop them in that boiling water?” my empathetic children want to know when Victor asks for their assistance in cooking the lobsters. To them, the crawling active creatures seem to possess more feeling than the clams they caught, but they happily indulge anyway.
The lagoon is as still as glass in the early morning as we head out in search of seals.The children bend over their cockpits mes- merized by the open book beneath them.The clear shallow water shows fish, crabs and Moon Snails creeping along, and all sorts of delicate sea greens undulating gently in the tide.
In the distance, we begin to see the seals beached on a sandbar, so many hunkered on top of each other that it looks like a sizeable piece of island.
“As we approach them,” Victor warns, “the children should stop paddling altogether and you and Todd paddle very low on the side away from them. The more movement there is, the more they can get spooked. ”Victor hands Sierra his binoculars and they become glued to her eyes.
Through the lens we can see the seals’ whiskers, and the mist snorting through their nostrils. The males have larger heads, pointier noses and look horse-like. Victor tells us grey seals have only one off-spring or pup born in mid-January to mid-February. The mothers nurse for three to four weeks and their milk is some of the richest on the planet—comparable to whales. We stop paddling and allow our boats to drift towards them.
With binoculars we can study individual seals and watch them open their mouths, raise their heads and howl.We laid in our sleep- ing bags and listened to them last night, completely in awe.
Over at their sandbar, forty more seals lumber into the water, looking so ungainly and awkward as they scrape themselves along by contracting their strong belly muscles. Once in the water, they swim with fluidity and grace that defies their huge bulk.
The children are mesmerized by the seals’ presence. Victor whispers to them,“What do you think?”And all they can do is nod their approval and give him the thumbs-up sign.
Perhaps the seals that did move off the sandbar are the inquisitive ones. Some swim to within fifteen metres of our boats.The low morning sunlight spots their heads a brilliant white. They surface so close to our boats—popping out of the water with a snort through their nostrils—we can actually smell their pungent fishy odour. After bobbing for awhile, studying us, they dive down with a slap and a splash.
We are right smack in the middle of the tide change and the sea is incredibly still. For half an hour we float peacefully, content to be in each other’s presence. Not a single boat has passed on its way out to the Northumberland Strait in the time we visit the seals. It is Sunday and the lobstermen have the day off.
We are all reluctant to head back. After a good half a mile we turn around to see half a dozen seals still following us. They too want us to stay and play a little longer. We feel connected both floating out there—us in our kayaks, them swimming and bobbing. There aren’t many experiences in life that come close to this type of communion with the natural world…a world only revealed through the power of your kayak paddle.
Cindy Ross is a freelance writer and photographer.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2002 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
