I was in British Columbia on a double assignment; combining a week in the Inside Passage searching for orcas, and a week trying to photograph grizzly bears on a remote river 150 miles from Vancouver. Since I first visited this part of west coast Canada in the early 1980s I have never failed to be impressed by the natural beauty which totally envelopes you here. Man is certainly the intruder in this wilderness and as a break to re-charge life’s urban batteries I try to return to this region every year.

Within moments of our immersion into this water-based environment we came upon a lone humpback whale feeding and shallow diving until a school of boisterous pacific white-sided dolphins arrived to harass it into a deep dive. The dolphins however stayed to entertain us with their bowriding and leaps out of the water.

The following morning at our anchor among the Cattle Islands the dawn blanket of mist was slowly burned off by an ever rising sun to reveal an abstract, almost surreal, composition. When nature’s awesome charm slowly reveals itself like this, as a print developing in a chemical solution, you are just glad to be a witness.

In the Inside Passage, between Vancouver Island and mainland BC, there are strong tidal currents which force upwellings of nutrient rich water for the various marine life to feed one. Lured by the presence of millions of Pacific salmon returning home to spawn every summer, large numbers of killer whales, or orcas, funnel down these waters to feed.

This day and every day we stayed in the region we were fortunate to see pods of orcas almost at will, such is the reliability of these resident whales. As the late afternoon sun backlit the spray plumes of five cruising whales as they glided on the surface, I realised we were witnessing one of the world’s wildlife jewels. There is nothing quite so magnificent as seeing one of these black and white tuxedoed mammals in its own natural environment as opposed to the tiny concrete prisons which masquerade as marine parks.

In addition to the orcas we had close encounters with a couple of gray whales, a harem of Steller sea-lions, dalls porpoise and even a browsing black bear on a nearby shoreline.

After a week on the water I flew by floatplane to Glendale River in Knight Inlet, an incredibly remote location 30 minutes by air from Vancouver, where Dean Wyatt has a floating lodge for guests to view the region’s wildlife. I was there to see one of North America’s most impressive predators; a 600 — 800lb grizzly bear, up close in the flesh.

Rob Almond, my bear guide, loaded his Winchester 12-gauge shotgun, handed me a can of Bear Deterrent, and motioned for me to follow him through the dark and dripping confines of the forest trail as we made our way to the river where we hoped to see the bears. A perfect paw print on the mud and very fresh bear dropping made me realise that this could become a brown trouser situation! Over the years I’ve photographed predatory cats in Kenya and India, crocodiles in Australia and polar bears in Canada but always from a position of relative safety. Not on the ground with visibility down to a few yards. This was a touch more interesting.

Only since 1993 with the banning of bear hunting by the creation of the Glendale River Bear Preserve have grizzlies here become more visible. Since the mid-’80s when the Deptartment of Fisheries built a spawning channel and weir on Glendale River to enhance the salmon stocks for commercial fishing, the food availability has always been present. However it’s only recently the bears have felt safe to fish openly in the presence of man.

Dean and his staff have built observation platforms by the riverbank affording perfect views as the bear fish and wander about no more than a few yards beneath.

In advance of the bears, dozens of pink salmon would flee up to the weir where they congregated in their hundreds as the bears leisurely swam up to take their fill. At times I witnessed seven bears feeding side by side and such was the abundance of choice the bears would only select the female salmon with their high-in-protein roe to eat, often ripping open the belly of a fish only to discard it untouched when discovering it to be male.

One day as we were about to leave, a large male suddenly came out of a thicket no more than 10 yards away as we stood on the open flatback of the truck. Our guides immediately raised their guns and took precautionary aim. Me, ... I raised my camera and took some real shots. For a moment the bear hesitated, as if deciding whether he fancied a meat alternative to his usual fish diet, before ambling down to the river.