Researchers furious over theft of teeth from orca’s carcass
SPECIES AT RISK: Criminal charges are possible
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is chasing leads in the theft of teeth from an orca’s carcass early Saturday on Vancouver Island.
Paul Cottrell, Pacific marine mammal co-ordinator for the DFO, said the department is investigating and will pursue charges against whoever is responsible for removing teeth from the carcass of the pregnant orca, known as J-32, or “Rhapsody,” which was hauled ashore Thursday onto a beach near Courtenay.
“We’ve got a few leads ... ,” Cottrell said. “We will do everything we can to find that out and charge them if we can locate where the teeth are. We don’t want a black market in illegal species.”
The 18-year-old orca was from the endangered 78-member Southern Resident population. Researchers believe the whale may have died during childbirth.
Under the federal Species at Risk Act, possession of an endangered or threatened species can lead to criminal charges.
Cottrell said the owner of a beachfront resort close to where the whale was brought ashore heard noises coming from the beach Saturday at around 2 a.m., but didn’t see anyone. DFO staff arrived the next day to find that several teeth had been broken or sawed-off at the orca’s gum line, Cottrell said.
“We were so angry when we got there in the morning on Saturday and someone had done this. When we realized it had been vandalized and teeth had been removed, it just made everybody sick. There were actually tears being shed ... ”
Dr. Justin Rosenberg, a veterinary fellow at the Vancouver Aquarium, said researchers were disappointed when they arrived to perform a necropsy. The theft would hinder certain parts of the research that looked at the orca’s overall dentition, Rosenberg said.
“It really is kind of an absolutely disheartening thing, to have an already tragic experience made even more tragic because someone has gone and essentially vandalized and done harm to the animal,” he said. “We went on with the overall necropsy and we’re just grateful they didn’t do anything else to hinder our ... scientific exploration.”
Peter Hamilton, founder of Vancouverbased ecology group Lifeforce, called the theft a “heinous act” that warranted criminal charges.
“It should be prosecuted to the fullest extent,” Hamilton said. “They’re just doing it for trinkets or to sell for profit.”
Cottrell requests that anyone with information about the theft call the DFO’s Observe, Record and Report hotline at 1-800-465-4336.