Environment
Protecting B.C.'s Orca Whales
By Roberta Staley published Oct 3, 2012
The waters off Vancouver Island are becoming a marine highway, and B.C.’s orca whales are in danger
On a remote island near Alert Bay off the northern British Columbia coastline sits a one-room cedar-shake cabin barely big enough for two people. The dearth of creature comforts is balanced by a mellifluous soundtrack: squeaks, clicks, trills, and whistles from pods of orcas, humpback whales, dolphins, and porpoises cavorting in the Pacific Ocean just a stone’s throw away.
The cabin is the research base for conservation biologist Dr. Rob Williams, 39, whose cutting-edge study of the underwater habitat of Vancouver Island’s two at-risk resident orca populations (a southern family of 88 and a northern group of about 240) has revealed significant stressors. A constant thunder of marine traffic—cruise ships, ocean liners, whale-watching boats, tugboats, and fishing vessels—is interfering with orcas’ echolocation. The use of echolocation is part of orcas’ complex dialect of noises used to communicate with each other, navigate, find mates, and hunt their favoured Chinook salmon. But the cacophony is clouding their world like cataracts and may be linked to declining orca numbers, says Williams. To open British Columbians’ eyes to the problem, he and his partner, dolphin and whale researcher Erin Ashe, have launched the Quiet Ocean Campaign. The pair, who also founded the B.C.-based research group Oceans Initiative, is calling for the creation of tranquil underwater sanctuaries off the coast as well as a reduction in marine noise to improve the habitat of this charismatic cetacean.
What could arguably be called Williams’s obsession with whales began in early childhood in his hometown of Comox on Vancouver Island. One day in Grade 3, his science teacher brought in a National Geographic containing an LP of Roger Payne’s songs of the humpback whale, the first recording made of the leviathan’s ethereal discourse. The thought that “maybe dinosaurs aren’t the coolest, maybe whales are the coolest,” set his compass on the path to conservation.
