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A whale advocate says many ship-animal collisions are likely going undetected or unreported as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) investigates another humpback whale death off the coast of British Columbia.
Caitlin Birdsall, chief executive of the Marine Education and Research Society, says the whale was discovered on November 8 off Lasqueti Island in the Strait of Georgia, near the Sunshine Coast, and is the third confirmed death since late September.
She says it’s unclear what happened to the 21-year-old whale, which DFO identified in photographs as Polyphemus, a whale that migrates between Hawaii and British Columbia waters.
Birdsall says he can’t say whether whale deaths are increasing due to ship strikes, because most dead whales are never found, but he can say that “there has been an increase in reports in recent months.”
DFO says in a statement that it is working to understand this latest death, noting that vessel strikes “are one of the main threats” to humpback whales, whose numbers have returned since commercial hunting stopped in the 1960s.
Christie McMillan, a DFO researcher who has been conducting whale studies in the Salish Sea since 2020, told CBC News there could be up to 400 humpback whales spending time in the area during the fall.
“The number of humpback whales should actually be declining, because people think they are migrating to warmer waters,” he said.
“And while that’s starting to be true, certainly in the Salish Sea and especially the Strait of Georgia, by far the most humpbacks are here in the fall, not the summer.”
A humpback whale calf nicknamed Skipper suffered a deep cut to its dorsal fin after a collision with a high-speed ferry near Vancouver’s English Bay. The incident has some calling for boats to use more caution in the water.
McMillan said it’s important for boaters to be aware that humpback whales are in BC waters year-round, and unfortunately it wasn’t surprising to see so many dead whales in recent weeks.
He said Polyphemus was known to frequent the northern part of the Strait of Georgia where its body was found, and that scientists still need to perform a necropsy to find the cause of the whale’s death.
“It’s a whale that returns to that area year after year and is known to people who study humpback whales in that area,” he said.
“And when it comes to him… we know there have been some vehicle collisions, like some boats.”
Third dead humpback
A dead humpback whale was found on September 18, a day after a BC Ferries ship reported a whale strike, while another whale was found dead on October 25, shortly after whale watching company Prince of Whales announced that one of its ships made contact with the animal.
On October 17, a high-speed ferry reported hitting a humpback whale near Vancouver in English Bay. Naturalists later confirmed that the boat had hit a calf, leaving a deep gash near its dorsal fin.
In this video from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a humpback whale is seen being freed from nearly 450 feet (137 meters) of fishing rope after a whale watching boat found it in the Strait of Georgia. Correction: An earlier version of this video included a headline saying the rope entangling the humpback whale was made of steel. In fact, according to the DFO, the rope was Polysteel, which is synthetic.
Birdsall says there has recently been an increase in reported boat strikes because they involved boats whose crew “are well aware of the legal reporting requirement” and who also had passengers on board to “hold them accountable.”
She says whales hit by ships may not die immediately, but rather “succumb to their injuries many weeks or months” later.
