Residents and visitors to Vancouver Island’s Long Beach are being asked to keep their distance from a deceased grey whale that has washed up on shore.
Officials with Pacific Rim National Park said the whale was first spotted on May 6 floating offshore on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
On Wednesday, it washed up on the beach.
Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Parks Canada are collaborating on the next steps for the whale.
The public is being asked to not touch the whale, to maintain their distance, and to keep all dogs on leash and away from the area.
“This is our second this year,” Paul Cottrell, the DFO Marine Mammal coordinator told Global News.
“There was an unusual mortality event that started in 2019, but last year we saw a decrease in mortality, so it was on for a number of years then it was closed.
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“But it may reopen depending on what we see this year. So far we’re seeing unfortunately an increase in those mortalities.”
A necropsy is planned but it may take months to find out what happened to the whale, officials said.
According to the Tofino Whale Centre, each spring grey whales travel between 10,000 and 12,000 miles between their winter calving lagoons in the warm waters of Mexico and their summer feeding grounds in the cold Arctic seas.
Each spring, about 20,000 grey whales travel past the western shores of Vancouver Island where this whale washed up.
“The whales are known to feed in the sheltered bays near Tofino beginning in March,” the organization states.
They will return in the fall by the same route.
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