Canadian scientists spot endangered whales

OTTAWA — For researchers surveying marine life off British Columbia’s coast, — it was a whale of a tale.

This summer, a group of biologists and Canadian Coast Guard members became the first people to report seeing endangered sei whales in Canadian waters in more than half a century.

“This was very exciting because we didn’t expect it,” said Thomas DoniolValcroze, a research biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

“People on my team had never seen them.”

The sei whale, one of the fastest marine mammals in the world, is part of the same family as blue and fin whales.

At one point, there were more than 60,000 sei whales in the North Pacific, but the population collapsed after whalers started targeting them. There hadn’t been a single reported sighting of a sei whale in Canadian waters since before whaling was banned in the 1960s.

Doniol-Valcroze was on board the Coast Guard ship near the end of July. It used floating sonar devices to listen for whale calls under the water.

“Sei whales are so rare nobody is actually completely sure what they sound like here in the Northeast Pacific,” he said.

“We started hearing those sounds that sounded very similar to what sei whales were recorded doing elsewhere. We started hearing them more and more and that led us to finding them and seeing them for the first time many years.”