Whale of an awareness campaign
Project SculptShore visits N.S., P.E.I. this summer
Not since Tom Carvel ice cream shops began selling Fudgie the Whale has a cetacean spent this much time driving up and down the East Coast.
Elizabeth Wile and Eveline Hipson are already midway through their summer drive with a life-sized baby whale calf sculpture, which is the face of their Project SculptShore awareness campaign. The initiative raise awareness for the North Atlantic right whale, says Hipson.
“We want to do that by focusing on positive messaging.”
“We created this project/ initiative as part of the Canadian Conservation Corps … a program run by the Canadian Wildlife Federation,” adds Wile, who says she and Hipson met during one of the corps’ earlier campaigns.
“The Conservation Corps specifically is to get people into the conservation industry and see what kinds of things youth voices can bring to the conservation industry.”
Project SculptShore initially started as their community outreach project with the Canadian Conservation Corps, but the scope of the project soon grew.
“Normally your stage three project, which is your community outreach project, is supposed to be, like, 100 hours worth of work,” says Wile, who says their workload is probably set to quadruple.
This pod, made up of Wile, Hipson and the (as of this writing) unnamed whale calf, are migrating across Nova Scotia and P.E.I. this summer, visiting shoreline cleanups and other community events, including screenings of The Last of the Right Whales, since the sculpture is based off one of its stars.
“They built us this six-metre-long
sculpture of a North Atlantic right whale based on the calf of Snow Cone, which is featured in the Last of the Right Whales film,” says Hipson, referring to Bern Art, the Lunenburg area artists who built the whale calf.
“We wanted to create this sculpture as a way to connect the public between this environmental issue with the threats that the North Atlantic right whale is facing.”
Those threats are three-fold, according to Wile.
“Number one being entanglement, number two being boat strikes and number three being ocean plastics.”
Most lobster fishing in
Nova Scotia uses ropes to connect traps on the sea floor to buoys on the surface, but right whales can get tangled in those ropes and perish. There are new, ropeless traps that Project SculptShore wants to encourage local fishers to adopt.
“We’ve partnered with the
CWF Marine Team, who is doing a ropeless fishing gear trial to limit the financial burden and get people to see the benefits of ropeless fishing gear, which is what will reduce entanglements in the future,” says Wile.
Boat strikes are what they sound like, accidentally hitting errant whales with boats. It’s what killed Snow Cone’s previous calf.
“However, she had a calf after two years, which is about three years before they anticipated her having another calf. This second calf is actually a big sign of hope for the population, which is why we featured it in this sculpture,” says Wile, adding technology is being used to help with this problem as well.
“The Ocean Tracking Network has gliders than listen acoustically for whale sounds and can change shipping lanes to reduce boat strikes.”
And of course, plastic pollution in the ocean needs no
introduction.
“We’re also looking at how individuals and corporations can reduce their plastic so that these whales don’t have to swim through an ocean of debris,” says Wile.
There are 12 events this summer, some of which are still in the planning stages as of press time.
You can keep up with The Last of the Right Whales screenings and the whale’s migration progress by using the hashtag #followthewhale on Facebook and Instagram.
One unexpected challenge has been the rising cost of gas. But they’ve started a GoFundMe campaign to help ease the financial burden of lugging a baby whale calf across the region.
“We’ve been phrasing our GoFundMe as ‘help us haul this not-so-little guy around,’” says Wile.
Wile and Hipson also believe this initiative will be of practical use to Nova Scotians, especially those in the fishing industry.
“Part of Project SculptShore is these whales are Maritimers,” says Wile. “They are critically endangered and they do surround the waters of Nova Scotia ... these whales are amazing (and also so are) the innovations that can come of trying to save them.”
“We share the ocean with them. We want to make sure that we’re doing so in a way that we all benefit,” adds Hipson.
This year won’t be the only time this whale rides for the betterment of Nova Scotian right whales. In fact, Wile and Hipson see a bright future for this calf.
“We’re hoping to become a non-profit potentially in the future … We’ve put so much into this whale, he’s (taken on) a life of his own and it’d be a shame if he didn’t hang around for a long time. We’re hoping he’s the next Theodore Tugboat,” said Wile.