Inslee-led task force calls for whale-watching ban
Pressure to ban commercial whale watchers from following endangered southern resident killer whales is mounting in Canada and the United States.
Five Canadian conservation groups petitioned the federal government in January to ban commercial vessels from pursuing the whales that make their summer feeding grounds in the waters off Washington state and British Columbia.
Now a task force created by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has recommended a three- to five-year moratorium on commercial and recreational whale watching on the southern residents.
The noise generated by small motors interferes with communication between whales and echolocation, which the orcas use to find their prey, said Misty MacDuffee, a program director at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, one of the groups pressing for a ban.
Whale watchers were caught off guard by the announcement, said Pacific Whale Watch Association executive member Brett Soberg, co-owner of Eagle Wing Tours.
“We are surprised to see this option emerge at the 11th hour, without a review of the science and no public comment,” he said.
Whale watchers voluntarily avoided the southern residents this past season when other whale viewing options were available, and implemented a new, larger buffer zone before it became federal law, he said.
Over the past two years, about 10 per cent of local whale sightings have been southern residents, in part because the group has spent less time in the area, he said.
“On the flip side of that, the transient killer whales — the mammal munchers — are doing very well,” he said. “I’d say 80 per cent of our sightings are transients along with humpbacks and minkes. They are all thriving in the same ecosystem.”
The southern residents are a genetically and culturally distinct orca population that feeds mainly on chinook salmon in the Salish Sea. One young male and two calves died this past summer, leaving 74 living members in three related pods. The mother of one calf carried her dead offspring at the water’s surface for 17 days, drawing worldwide media attention to the group’s plight.
In creating the task force, Inslee sought specific actions to address threats to the southern residents, including prey availability, toxic contaminants and disturbance from noise and vessel traffic.
While Canada has pledged to coordinate its actions closely with agencies in the U.S., the government has shown no appetite for an outright ban on whale watching.
In their January petition, Raincoast, the David Suzuki Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund and others sought an emergency order from Ottawa that would have allowed for immediate measures to save the orcas from “immediate threats” to their survival. Their demands included a full ban on whale watching for the southern residents and restrictions on harvesting south-migrating chinook that sustain the southern residents.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) instead closed parts of the southern residents’ critical feeding areas to commercial and recreational fishing, curtailed the chinook fishery by 35 per cent and this summer increased the whalewatching buffer zone, from 100 to 200 metres.
Conservationists argued that the extended buffer zone makes little difference to the disturbance caused by whale-watching boats.
“They’ve taken some positive steps with fishing closures, but failed to recognize the role that whale watching plays in disturbing (the southern residents’) behaviour and their ability to locate prey,” said MacDuffee. “They didn’t even close (critical feeding ) areas to whale-watching.”
Last week, Ottawa announced a $61.5-million suite of measures to address known threats to the southern residents, including habitat protection, recovery strategies for chinook salmon, enhancing noise-mitigation programs already underway with B.C. Ferries and the Port of Vancouver, and creating sanctuaries in the whales’ critical feeding areas.
That is in addition to the $167-million federal Whales Initiative, which promised a reduction in chinook harvests, route changes to marine shipping and reducing toxic contaminants.