Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is investigating three collisions between ships and humpback whales within a 10-day timeframe last month in B.C. waters.
The strikes took place along northern shipping routes near Prince Rupert and Kitimat between July 20 and 29. It’s unclear if any of the whales survived.
The federal department confirmed the first strike happened July 20 in Wright Sound with BC Ferries’ Northern Expedition, and the second happened July 21 with a boat taking workers to Alcan Rio Tinto’s Kemano hydroelectric dam.
The third happened in Hecate Straight on July 29 and involved a cruise ship.
“The vessel operators have been cooperating with DFO on the details of these incidents,” said the federal ministry’s Dan Bate, manager of strategic communications.
“Any operator of a vessel or fishing gear involved in accidental contact with a marine mammal is required to notify DFO of the incident, as per section 39 of the Marine Mammal Regulations.”
Recent peer-reviewed research published in the Inter-Research Science Publisher predicts deadly humpback whale collisions with ships in Gitga’at First Nation territory will increased nearly four-fold by 2030 — up to 20 deaths a year — largely due to increased marine traffic from LNG projects in the area.
Authors from several universities, the DFO, whale research organizations, and non-profits analyzed multiple databases, line-transect surveys, aerial footage, and whale-borne tags to draw their conclusions, in addition to using shore-based monitoring and simulations.
Together, they name LNG Canada as a likely culprit. The company’s $40-billion project in Kitimat is the only LNG export facility currently being built in Canada and is slated to begin delivery mid-decade.
Eric Keen, science co-director at BC Whales and a co-author of the paper, said he was surprised by their findings, given that he’s never seen a fatal humpback whale strike in Gitga’at territory.
“It just goes to show how many more strikes could actually be happening — if three happened in 10 days, how many could be happening in a year?” he asked.
“Our models are predicting that there will be so many strikes when LNG comes that these whale populations are actually going to decline — that we’re going to reverse the recovery of these whale populations that we’ve seen for the last 20, 30 years.”
The models were designed to use conservative estimates, Keen added, so as not to cause “alarm.”
In an emailed statement, LNG Canada said it is committed to protecting the environment it operates in, with safe operations “top priorities” on land and in the water.
“We follow British Columbia North Coast Waterway Management Guidelines for all vessels including large commercial ships, tugboats and barges,” a spokesperson wrote.
“We continue to work with local authorities and stakeholders to protect the waters we share, and to monitor and mitigate impacts to the environment, marine mammals and nearby communities.”
LNG Canada also helps fund a number of wildlife protection initiatives, and contributed to a new Marine Emergency Response and Research Facility in Hartley Bay, B.C., which will serve as a base for Gitga’at-led marine research, rescue operations and research, the spokesperson added.
Commercial hunting of humpback whales was banned in the 1960s, helping bring the species back from the verge of extinction.
According to the Pacific Whale Watch Association, 2022 was a record-breaking year for humpback whale sightings in the Salish Sea. Nearly 400 individual whales were photographed over the course of the season — the highest number documented in a single year in at least the last century.
Jackie Hildering, a humpback researcher with the Marine Education Research Society, said last month’s ship strikes are particularly concerning because while DFO knew about them, researchers and non-profits didn’t hear about them for quite some time.
“We as researchers were not let know by official means,” she explained.
“Learning from these accidents, you could look at where they happened, where that overlap is, what speed were the vessels going, what were the conditions, was it foggy? Was that appropriate relative to the speed that the vessel was going?
“We are calling for a culture of openness and learning so that the threat can be reduced.”
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