Boats forced whales to change direction

Re: “It’s time to stop whale-watching tours,” letter, Aug. 12.

Last Wednesday, a group of us were returning from a lovely day kayaking around Discovery and Chatham islands. As we paddled toward the Oak Bay Marina, we saw a mass of whale-watching boats and a handful of private boats (I counted 16 boats in total) in a semi-circle around the north side of the Chain Islets.

As we approached, a Zodiac with two women on board motored up to us (no identification visible, but supposedly with the marine-mammal monitoring group) and they stated that there was a pod of orcas ahead “behaving erratically.” Who would have guessed, with all those motor boats circling around?

When I asked how much noise the boat motors were making and about the fact that the boats appeared to be in a semicircle forcing the whales to swim between the Chain Islets, they said that what the boats were doing was within the legal requirements for whale-watching. If this is the case, then something needs to change.

This is the second time in the past three years I have watched from my kayak as motor boats (mostly commercial whalewatching boats) formed a line or semi-circle and appeared to force the whales to change direction. That, along with the way noise is amplified underwater, has me very concerned for the whales, especially orcas who use echo-locating to communicate as well as to navigate to avoid obstacles.

Jennie Sutton Oak Bay