Researchers see hopeful signs for Canada's whale populations

TORONTO — We can all agree that 2020 was a challenging year for Canadians. That is, unless you’re a whale.

Several Canadian whale populations saw better-than-average growth rates or fewer deaths in 2020 after a series of tough years that included newborn deaths, fishing net entanglements and deadly run-ins with boats.

Experts say some species have seen spectacular growth that offers hope for the long-term sustainability of the marine mammals often considered a barometer for ocean health. But others say Canada needs to do a better job of tracking whales, particularly those not currently at risk, to keep them off the list of endangered species.

Here’s a look at the latest on Canada’s whale populations and how experts expect they’ll fare in 2021.

ORCA WHALES

British Columbia has several distinct orca populations defined by where they live and what they eat. The population most at risk, the salmon-eating southern resident orcas most often seen in the Salish Sea between B.C. and Washington, are considered endangered.

The latest population count is 74 whales, according to the Centre for Whale Research. Thomas Doniol-Valcroze, head of the cetacean research program through Fisheries and Oceans Canada, points out that two of those orcas are newborns and appear to have survived their first few months.

Among those new additions is a calf born in September from a mother known as J35, the whale perhaps best known for spending 17 days in 2018 pushing the body of her dead newborn.

While any newborn calves are a good sign, Doniol-Valcroze said it’s too soon to get excited.

“The public is looking for a good news story and every year you have more whales is good news,” he said. “But we have to be careful about being too optimistic when you have two new calves in the population because, in the past, these calves haven’t survived.”

A greater source of hope can be found in other orca populations — specifically, the salmon-eating northern residents and the seal-eating transient orcas.

At one point, in the years after whaling ended, there were just over 100 northern residents left in B.C. But, over time, the population has swelled to more than 300 whales.

The most recent figures show the population grew by 2.6 per cent in 2019, a steady growth rate for animals that have a gestation period of at least 15 months and deliver one calf at a time.

These days, researchers who track northern residents by cataloguing their dorsal fins say they face a new problem: tracking down every known whale.

“We have a lot more animals to find and count than we used to, so it's becoming harder to find every one of them every year,” Doniol-Valcroze said, adding that the whales have spread out across a larger area.

The most optimistic sign for B.C.’s orcas is among the transient population, which have seen their numbers grow quickly as the prevalence of their primary food source — seals — has similarly grown.

“They’re quite fat and happy,” Doniol-Valcroze said. “It’s a big shift.”

While researchers are working to update estimates on the exact number of transients in B.C., Doniol-Valcroze said nearly 800 individual whales are known, and the known subset has grown by four per cent each year.

“Which is really high,” Doniol-Valcroze said. “It's close to what we think is the maximum biological growth rate.”

More transient orcas means more sightings for boaters and whale watching tours, which also gives the struggling southern residents a bit of a break from sightseeing encounters.

“So I think that’s a good story. It’s certainly something people hear in B.C. a lot,” Doniol-Valcroze said.

NORTH ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALES

On the Atlantic coast, North Atlantic right whales have been struggling to survive, with only about 400 whales left on the planet.

In July, the International Union for Conservation of Nature moved the whales from "endangered" to "critically endangered" on its list of species facing threats to their survival. The only move left is “extinct.”

The whales, which can live for 70 years and grow to more than 15 metres long, have seen their numbers dwindle due to ship strikes and entanglements with fishing gear. More than 30 whales have been killed in the last three years, most of them in Canadian waters.

While this population remains highly vulnerable, there was one reason for optimism in 2020: not a single North Atlantic right whale was killed in Canada.

The federal government has ramped up its efforts to protect the remaining whales. In November, Ottawa suspended fisheries in an area off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia after the whales were spotted swimming there.

Fred Whoriskey, executive director at the Ocean Tracking Network, an organization that tracks the whales using underwater gliders hooked up with hydrophones, said these sorts of measures can make a difference in preventing fatal boat collisions.

“The measures that the DFO has taken in the face of this change is actually a great credit to the way they have pivoted. We went from bad year of a high number of mortalities to none known lost in Canadian waters this year. So the measures are working in terms of providing the protection,” Whoriskey told CTVNews.ca.

If North Atlantic right whales are able to recover, it won’t be overnight. The population can grow at a slow rate of about two per cent every year, if enough calves are born and mature whales aren’t killed or die by natural causes.

“In some ways we’re still impacted by the effects of whaling,” Whoriskey said. “After 100 years, there has been some progress, but we’re not out of the woods, and certainly not back to where whale populations traditionally were.”

Looking ahead to 2021, Whoriskey is hopeful that fewer whale deaths, greater public awareness and government conservation efforts could help the struggling population grow, slowly but surely.

“I’m always optimistic, otherwise I wouldn’t be in this profession,” he said. “I don't think that things are going to get worse.”

HUMPBACK WHALES

One of Canada’s biggest cetacean success stories is among humpbacks in B.C. Commercial whaling killed thousands of humpbacks until 1966, when legal protections ended the slaughter.

But those numbers have risen steadily over the decades, with research from the mid-2000s indicating the presence of 2,145 humpbacks, with the population increasing by about four per cent each year.

There is reason to believe the population has continued to grow. Jackie Hildering researches humpbacks in an area in northern Vancouver Island with the Marine Education and Research Society. In 2003, her group documented seven individual whales in an entire year. Their most recent survey of the same area, from 2019, found 96 humpbacks.

“That’s just one small part of the coast,” she said. “What we can say is that the humpback comeback continues. It’s a rare second chance.”

Thomas Doniol-Valcroze with the DFO said humpbacks are a “spectacular” comeback story that offers important insights about conservation.

“Something I try to remind people is we tend to focus our attention and focus on the species that are not doing well … but sometimes we forget that the vast majority of whale populations, especially the larger whales, have recovered quite well from the whaling era,” he said.

“I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture of our oceans because there are a lot of threats and concerns, but something I find that the public usually doesn’t know is that there is a lot more good new stories out there than bad new stories.”

MINKE WHALES

Pinpointing the exact population of a species of whales isn’t easy, but minke whales are especially tough. With their small dorsal fins and ability to dive underwater for long periods, minkes are much harder to catalogue than orcas, which travel in the same family units, or pods, and have distinctive fins that are easy to catalogue.

B.C.’s minke whales are not considered an at-risk species, which means they aren’t tracked as closely as other species. Less tracking also means we don’t know as much about their population size, though the Marine Education and Research Society, which does its own tracking, suggests that these numbers could be low.

This overall lack of information means that it’s hard to say if minkes had a good or bad year, Hildering said.

“We tend to hear so much about orca and their numbers, so the thinking is we know all the numbers of all whales,” Hildering said. "In minkes, I truly can’t say, because there is such an absence of knowledge.”

Rather than dealing with whale populations that are most in crisis, Hildering said more work needs to be done on tracking and protecting populations that aren’t yet in dire straits.

“We should be looking at the ones that get the status of special concern, which is below threatened, because by monitoring how they are doing and understanding them better, then you can stop them from potentially becoming threatened or beyond.”