Widespread species decline at the hands of humans is a powerful tale. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, more than 27 per cent of 100,000 assessed species are threatened with extinction. This disappearance is a warning that something is amiss on Earth.

The Anthropocene is the newly recognized geological epoch defined as widespread environmental change or crisis caused by human activity. Some predict history will remember it as the sixth mass extinction event on Earth.

Yet when the choice lies between protecting an endangered species or pursuing economic development, we almost always side with development. Maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise: as a species, we have evolved with a predisposition to favour growth over environmentally rational decisions. The world is literally dying around us as we continue to pursue the myth of endless growth.

Paying no heed

In June 2019, Canada’s federal government approved the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion to carry oil from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia. It did so despite an environmental assessment that found marine vessel traffic associated with the additional pipeline capacity will further dim the already dire prospects for the endangered southern resident killer whales.

This was not much of a surprise, really, since the federal government had already approved the pipeline expansion in November 2016. That approval, however, was quashed by the Federal Court of Appeal in August 2018, in part because the original environmental assessment had failed to consider the pipeline’s adverse impacts to the marine environment.

At a policy level, Canada marked its commitment to protect species at risk in 1992 when it ratified the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The federal, provincial and territorial governments agreed to a national approach for the protection of species at risk in 1996.

The strongest legislation to protect species at risk in Canada is generally considered to be the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA). But describing SARA as “strong” is misleading.

Studies show that species are less likely to be listed as threatened or endangered under SARA if they are the target of a commercial harvest. The most obvious example may be the demise of the Atlantic cod, a marine fish once abundant off the coast of Newfoundland. It has still not been listed under SARA despite having lost 99 per cent of its population since the 1960s due to overfishing.

And only rarely does the habitat necessary to the survival or recovery of a species at risk, called critical habitat protection, get legally protected under SARA.

As the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion approval illustrates, SARA is too easily disregarded by federal officials. Arguably SARA has protected only two species from economic development: the small population of greater sage grouse in southeastern Alberta and a population of the western chorus frog in a suburb of Montréal.

Whooping crane woes

Some provinces still have no dedicated legislation for the protection of species at risk. Alberta is one of the laggards. Provincial officials in Alberta routinely approve resource development at the expense of species at risk protection.

Perhaps the most glaring and obvious example is the massive ecological footprint of forestry, drilling sites, seismic lines, oilsands mines and in-situ oil extraction projects in northern Alberta. This has contributed to a sharp decline in woodland caribou populations.

Alberta continues to offer pie-in-the-sky measures to halt this decline. But in 2018, the province suspended efforts to protect caribou habitat, claiming that Albertans needed a caribou protection plan that also protected jobs and the economy. Say what?

On July 25, the Alberta Energy Regulator approved yet another new oilsands mine to be constructed and operated by Teck Resources just 30 kilometres south of Wood Buffalo National Park, despite finding that the mine will have a significant adverse impact on what is left of caribou habitat in this region of Alberta.

The Alberta Energy Regulator also acknowledged that the proposed Teck mine falls under the migratory pathway for the only native population of migratory whooping cranes on Earth (their summer breeding habitat is protected in Wood Buffalo National Park), and that during migration, the cranes could land on the mine’s tailings ponds and come into contact with the toxic soup.

A whooping crane family in their wintering grounds at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. Photo: Flickr

The whooping crane is listed as an endangered species under SARA, and mortality risk during migration is considered to be a primary threat to the overall total population of about 500 birds.

Nonetheless, the Alberta Energy Regulator found that any additional mortality of cranes because of this new mine would not have any adverse impact on the species. It would rely on proposed bird deterrent mechanisms to prevent cranes from landing in the tailings ponds. Yet the effectiveness of all known deterrent mechanisms used by oilsands operators has been questioned and surely any adverse impact on an endangered species should be viewed as significant.

The Teck mine still requires federal approval before it can proceed, so there is perhaps still a distant hope of protecting further destruction of habitat for the threatened caribou and endangered cranes.

Commercial pass

British Columbia is another province without dedicated endangered species protection laws. Enacting new legislation had been a policy priority for the B.C. government until recently, when in response to concerns about the adverse economic impacts of protecting caribou, the premier announced that new legislation was off the drafting table.

The Ontario Endangered Species Act was, at one time, considered to be strong legislation. However, in 2013 the Ontario government enacted regulations under the legislation to exempt certain commercial activities such as forestry, hydro-electric generation, quarrying and wind power generation from rules that protect endangered species.

In April 2019, the Ontario government proposed further amendments to its Endangered Species Act. Environmental advocates say these changes will give industry a free pass to exterminate species at risk in the province.

Economic gain, environmental pain

Meaningful legal protection of species at risk in Canada requires effective legislation implemented by all levels of government, but the provinces are the key. That’s because the overwhelming majority of endangered wildlife in Canada and their habitat are located on lands owned by the provinces.

Habitat loss is the primary cause of species decline and energy development is a significant contributor in this regard. Those with the greatest legal power to protect species at risk (that is, provincial officials) also happen to be those with the most to gain economically from the extraction and development of natural resources.

The result is predictable. Species decline will continue to accelerate in Canada as we push for more energy development and reduce the regulation of resource extraction and economic growth. Legal protection for endangered species in Canada seems to be getting weaker at precisely the moment when it should be getting stronger.

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Woodfibre LNG, a liquefied natural gas export facility planned for Howe Sound on the southern B.C. coast, is a big step closer to construction following receipt of a key permit from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission on Tuesday.

The eight-page permit outlines the requirements the facility, owned by Indonesian billionaire Sukanto Tanoto, must meet for design, construction and operation — including a tsunami hazard study, a flaring notification plan and reports on emissions such as noise and black smoke.

The waters of the 44-kilometre long Howe Sound fjord, flanked by the Coast Mountains, are home to fragile glass sponge reefs, salmon, herring, porpoises and whales. Long polluted by industries on its shores, including a large copper mine, Howe Sound was returning to life after extensive rehabilitation efforts when Woodfibre and other new industrial developments were proposed.

Woodfibre LNG president David Keane called the permit “a positive step forward” for the project, which would see LNG offloaded from floating storage tanks near Squamish to LNG carriers as long as six football fields.

The LNG carriers would traverse the island-studded waterways of Howe Sound three to four times a month, accompanied by three tugboats and two pilots familiar with B.C.’s coast, according to the company.

“This permit is a large piece of our puzzle, and with it in place, we are working towards a final investment decision to proceed with this project this summer,” Keane said Wednesday in a news release.

Fracked gas export project to add carbon emissions equivalent to 170,000 cars 

According to the Pembina Institute, carbon emissions from the Woodfibre LNG project would add the equivalent of 170,000 new cars to B.C. roads each year, while the project would use the same amount of freshwater annually as 5,500 households.

Gas for Woodfibre LNG will be fracked in northeast B.C. and sent via pipeline to the coast.

Eoin Finn, a spokesperson for the Howe Sound group My Sea to Sky, said he is concerned that the oil and gas commission’s permit approves the use of two aging LNG tankers that Woodfibre plans to bring from Singapore for floating LNG storage.

According to the company, the permanently moored tankers will be “refurbished.”

The 40-year-old tankers are “way past their best before date,” said Finn, a former partner with the global accounting firm KPMG who resides on Bowyer Island in Howe Sound.

“They would normally have been scrapped by now,” Finn told The Narwhal. “They’re amongst the oldest two per cent of the world’s 400-strong LNG tanker fleet. Both have been in accidents and have been patched up.”

Finn said new LNG tankers have thick hulls but old ones can develop weak spots and rust can affect the stability of the hull and joints.

“If you get a leak from the tanks onto marine steel at minus 160 [degrees Celsius — the temperature to which gas is cooled in the liquefaction process] marine steel becomes really brittle and you could hit that hull with a hammer and break it into bits.”

Tankers carrying flammable gas will intersect ferry crossings  

Finn, who holds a PhD in physical chemistry, said the U.S. does not allow LNG plants or tankers within 3.5 kilometres of significant populated areas.

“That cargo is full of flammable gas with the thermal equivalent of 72 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs aboard.”

Carriers picking up Woodfibre LNG will intersect with four ferry crossings in waterways with both freighter and recreational boat traffic, Finn pointed out.

If a collision occurs and a loaded LNG tanker develops a hole, everything within 500 metres will be frozen, Finn said. Should a tanker carrying LNG catch fire, he said people up to 3.5 kilometres away will suffer severe burns.

Woodfibre LNG is a member of the Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators, an industry organization that has promoted best practices in the LNG shipping and terminal industries for the past 40 years.

The society’s standards state that waterways containing navigational hazards are to be avoided as LNG ports and that ports must be located in places where vapours from a release or spill cannot affect civilians. “Long, narrow inland waterways are to be avoided, due to greater navigational risk,” according to the standards.

Woodfibre LNG did not respond to a request for comment from The Narwhal by our deadline.

The location of the Woodfibre LNG project in Howe Sound. Map: The Future of Howe Sound Society

Orcas and other at-risk species could suffer from noise, flaring 

Finn said he is also concerned the Oil and Gas Commission permit allows the LNG facility to emit noise, light and black smoke and flares.

The permit stipulates the public, the district of Squamish and three nearby First Nations must be notified at least 24 hours before a planned flaring event or within 24 hours of the start of an unplanned flaring event lasting more than four hours.

“This ruling gives them permission to flare any time they want,” Finn said. “A flare is not my definition of a sightly object in the primary tourist route to Whistler.”

The Woodfibre LNG project, on the site of a former pulp and paper mill seven kilometres southwest of Squamish, has already received environmental assessment approvals from the B.C. and federal governments.

Orca whales, grey whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins and harbour porpoises will be subject to potential sensory disturbances from the project, according to Woodfibre’s executive summary for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

Nine bird species listed as vulnerable to extinction, including the barn swallow and coastal western screech owl, and three at-risk amphibian species (the coastal tailed frog, Northern red-legged frog and Western toad) will be subject to potential sensory disturbances, habitat fragmentation and barriers to movement, the summary states.

Woodfibre donated generously to B.C. Liberals and NDP

The Oil and Gas Commission permit is the first major authorization for Woodfibre LNG issued by B.C.’s NDP government, which green-lighted the much larger LNG Canada project last year.

Woodfibre LNG, which employs NDP operative and former NDP cabinet minister Moe Sihota as a lobbyist, is a private company owned by Pacific Oil and Gas, which is part of the Singapore- based Royal Golden Eagle group of companies owned by Tanoto. Forbes pegs Tanoto’s personal wealth at US $1.4 billion.

The Royal Golden Eagle group, which has assets exceeding $20 billion, includes pulp and paper and palm oil divisions.

Woodfibre LNG donated more than $137,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party between 2014 and 2017, according to the B.C. political donations database. The company donated more than $72,000 to the B.C. NDP over the same time frame.

More LNG projects ‘knocking on our door’

Karen Tam Wu, regional director of B.C. for the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank, said Woodfibre LNG and the significantly larger LNG Canada project have already been considered in B.C.’s carbon “budget.”

LNG Canada will produce 9.6 megatonnes of carbon per year by 2050, according to the Pembina Institute. B.C.’s legislated target for total carbon pollution is 13 megatonnes a year by 2050.

“We’ve always known that this was coming … the challenge of meeting our climate commitments with this project and LNG Canada’s first phase is coming to fruition,” Wu told The Narwhal.

The B.C. government has said it will devise a plan within the next two years to enable B.C. to meet its 2030 carbon reduction goals. The government’s current plan is a blueprint for meeting only 75 per cent of B.C.’s targets.

“We do still need to see that,” Wu said. “And we have a lot of moving LNG proposals out there. So we need to see how the government will be able to get us on a path to fully meet our climate commitments and reconcile that with LNG projects that are knocking on our door.”

About 10 LNG facilities are still proposed for B.C., according to the group LNG in Northern B.C. As of January 2019, plans for seven additional LNG facilities had been cancelled.

LNG undermining carbon reduction goals: new report

LNG is often touted as a transition fuel to help lower global carbon emissions.

But a report released on Monday by the international non-profit group Global Energy Monitor found the international LNG boom is undermining global efforts to slow climate change.

Global LNG investments are “on a collision course” with the goals of the Paris climate change accord and Canada is one of the world’s worst offenders, according to the report.

Like the LNG Canada project, Woodfibre LNG will benefit from a host of public subsidies and electricity rates far lower than what residential BC Hydro customers pay.

Woodfibre has also signed an agreement with the Squamish First Nation that could see the nation receiving $225 million in benefits over 40 years.

Last week, Woodfibre announced it had signed an LNG sales and purchase agreement with BP Gas Marketing, with first delivery expected in 2023.

The National Energy Board issued a 40-year export licence for Woodfibre LNG in June 2017, extending the project’s original 25-year licence by 15 years.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The sight of dozens of tiny chum and chinook salmon funnelled into a trap by special nets sent biologists from Raincoast Conservation Foundation into an excited frenzy of high-fives as they squelched through the muddy waters of the Lower Fraser tidal marsh.

“We were in our waders, waving our nets and jumping up and down in the estuary,” said Misty MacDuffee, Raincoast’s wild salmon program director.

As the group was setting the nets in March, weeks after knocking holes in the Steveston jetty, it was difficult to see the fish because of cloudy water, but then it became apparent that juvenile salmon were moving through the newly created passages into the relative safety of the marsh, said Dave Scott, Raincoast’s Lower Fraser salmon program coordinator.

“We were ecstatic to see it was working. Seeing those fish made us realize that what we were doing was really necessary,” he said.

Dave Scott, Lower Fraser salmon program coordinator with a team from the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, nets juvenile salmon accessing Sturgeon Bank through the recently punctured Steveston jetty. Photo: Alex Harris / Raincoast

The importance of estuaries

It is rare for a habitat restoration project to show such instant signs of success, but creating breaches in the eight-kilometre Steveston jetty, which controls the main arm of the Fraser River as it enters the estuary, offered an almost immediate payoff.

The jetty, constructed from rock rubble between 1911 and 1933, means juvenile salmon leaving their freshwater birthplaces are blocked from the calm side channels of the estuary. So, instead of spending time growing and feeding in the brackish marshes of Sturgeon Bank, they are likely to be whooshed out into the Strait of Georgia before they adjust to salt water living.

The fish, which are less than five centimetres long at that stage in their lives, must go through physiological changes before they head out to sea.

The lower Fraser River. The Steveston jetty prevents juvenile salmon from accessing the estuary zone in Sturgeon Bank. A habitat connectivity project managed by the Raincoast Conservation Project is changing that. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

As salmon move from freshwater, where they have been incubated as eggs, they are transformed through a smoltification process before they hit salt water, said Murray Manson, restoration biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which is funding the project through the federal government’s coastal restoration fund.

But that is not easy for small fish in the Fraser where jetties and dredging in the main channel are designed to move water to the ocean as fast as possible. The original aim was to help ships navigate their way quickly into the Strait of Georgia and stop sediment gathering in the main shipping channel.

There is one opportunity for the fish to make an exit and get into the marsh in front of Sturgeon Bank and, if they miss it, they are pushed out into the Salish Sea, MacDuffee said.

“If you are a tiny little fish who wants to stay in shallow, fresh protected water, Georgia Strait is not where you want to end up,” she said.

MacDuffee holds up juvenile salmon captured along the Steveston jetty in March. Photo: Alex Harris / Raincoast

“They don’t want to go out there until they have been able to spend time acclimatizing and going through this physiological transformation. They are moving from freshwater, where they are always trying to keep their mineral balance and their salts held in, to going into salt water where they are always trying to keep salt from getting into their bodies. Everything has to reverse for them,” she said.

So, at a time when the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) is reporting that eight of B.C.’s chinook populations are endangered, four are threatened and one is considered of special concern, the sight of the young chinook and chum using breaches in the jetty to get to safer waters was inspiring.

“There they were, just moving through all the channels that had just been created. One of our engineers said that, if we just get all the rock and hard material that forms the jetty out of the way, nature will do the rest. Nature will carve the path through the marsh, behind the breaches,” MacDuffee said.

The initial work, researched by Raincoast biologists, saw a clamshell dredger chomping lumps out of the jetty and it is expected that when the Fraser is running high it will scour out the breaches, naturally helping the process.

A clamshell digger removes jetty materials used to modify flow of the Lower Fraser River since the early 20th century. Photo: Alex Harris / Raincoast

The Raincoast team surveying for tiny juvenile salmon along the Steveston jetty. Photo: Alex Harris / Raincoast

The Raincoast team in the lower Fraser River. Photo: Alex Harris / Raincoast

Provided ongoing monitoring shows the plan is continuing to work, the 50-metre wide breaches will be deepened next year.

“The breaches are being cut in two phases. We will see how they behave over the next couple of months and then we will hopefully cut down a little deeper so (the jetty) is open over a broader range of tide cycles,” Manson said.

Development around the Lower Fraser estuary has meant dykes, fish-killing pump stations, dredging and infilling, Manson said.

“Sometimes people aren’t even aware that large areas of land used either for terminals or even neighbourhoods are built on infilled marshland that used to be tidal and used to have small channels that the juvenile chinook would move into,” he said.

“You couldn’t really plan out out a better way to try and remove a species.”

The breaches, while are unlikely to affect shipping, are likely to provide side benefits to areas such as Delta and Richmond as the changes are expected to improve the Sturgeon Bank ecosystem by washing fine sediment into the marsh instead of powering it out to sea.

“The area we are connecting the river to is really being starved of that sediment. It is being forced out into the middle of the Strait instead of helping build a healthy delta and a healthy marsh. We are hoping and expecting that by providing more fine sediment along Sturgeon Bank it will help the delta grow and the delta is the City of Richmond’s primary defence against sea-level rise,” Scott said.

A perforated Steveston jetty will provide connectivity for juvenile salmon needing to pass from the Lower Fraser River to Sturgeon Bank. Photo: Alex Harris / Raincoast

Hope for endangered killer whales

Hopes are running high that restoring parts of the Lower Fraser habitat to help struggling chinook populations will also provide more food for the dwindling population of southern resident killer whales, whose primary source of food is chinook.

“The best investment both for chinook salmon and for southern resident killer whales is in restoring wild salmon populations — getting away from hatcheries — and getting the habitat back so the salmon can come and spawn in the places they have spawned for thousands and thousands of years,” MacDuffee said.

“The recovery of wild salmon is the best hope for the southern resident killer whales.”

The three southern resident killer whale pods have been reduced to 74 animals and studies have established that the greatest threats faced by the whales are lack of prey, contaminants and noise disturbance. The whales will face additional threats from increased oil tanker traffic if the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is approved by the federal government in June.

“When we thought about priorities for the (coastal restoration) fund, right at the forefront was trying to get chinook populations in better shape, not only for the chinook, but for the species that rely on them like southern resident killer whales,” Manson said.

The initial success of the project shows that small-scale habitat restoration projects can make a significant difference, Scott said.

While big dams on rivers such as the Snake in Washington State, which block adult spawners, are an obvious impediment to salmon population recovery, smaller scale projects can have a noticeable impact, he said.

“They may not be as obvious as those really big pieces of infrastructure but these smaller ones can be really important,” Scott said.

The aim of the $75-million coastal restoration fund — part of the federal five-year, $1.5-billion oceans protection plan — is to restore vulnerable coastline areas and protect marine life and ecosystems.

In addition to the five-year Raincoast project, which is receiving $2.7 million, other projects on the Lower Fraser include a similar effort by Ducks Unlimited Canada and a project in partnership with the Fraser Valley Watersheds Coalition, to reclaim a gravel pit near Hope that has become a killing ground for young salmon.

The Tom Berry Gravel Pit, which was used during construction of the Coquihalla Highway in the 1980s, is beside the Fraser River and floods every year during the spring freshet, trapping young salmon, which are then stranded when the water recedes.

The project is returning the gravel pit to natural floodplain habitat, so small fish will be able to return to the river instead of dying in the pit.

But more needs to be done, MacDuffee emphasized.

“The most important thing is we have to stop destroying what’s left of the habitat in the Lower Fraser. There are a lot of proposals in the works right now that would erode and degrade those remaining stretches of habitat that still function,” she said pointing to LNG storage and export proposals and the Terminal Two plan, now under review, to expand cargo handling capacity at Roberts Bank.

“We have got to stop making the mistakes of the past and making decisions to facilitate industry … At a time when we need to be going in the other direction and restoring lost habitat, we are still undercutting and undermining the habitat that we have,” she said.

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Three of the last un-diked islands on the lower Fraser River have been bought by developers and heavily logged, threatening the most productive habitat stronghold for salmon and white sturgeon left in the entire Fraser watershed.

Fisheries scientist Marvin Rosenau, an instructor in the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s fish, wildlife and recreation program, found out about it by accident. Back in June 2017, he was driving home to Abbotsford from a fishing trip in the interior, when he turned a bend just above Bridal Falls and looked down at Herrling Island.

“The whole landscape was bereft of trees,” he said of the 780-hectare island in the main stem of the Fraser River about 20 km northeast of Chilliwack. “It just ripped my guts out to see that.”

For Rosenau, a biologist and obsessive sports fisherman who has dedicated over 30 years to protecting the river, it was just the latest calamity for the Heart of the Fraser, one of the planet’s most productive networks of fish-friendly channels, islands and wetlands stretching 80 kilometres between Mission and the town of Hope.

For more than a decade he battled Fraser Valley developers who dug up large amounts of gravel from this stretch of river, under the guise of “flood protection” — resulting in massive salmon mortalities and, critics claim, permanent changes to the structure and flow of the river between Mission and the Harrison River confluence.

More than two years after the purchases were made, the fate of the islands remains uncertain, as a coalition of conservation groups and allies rally to raise funds in a last-hour attempt to buy and protect them in perpetuity.

The importance of saving these last island nurseries at this moment — in the wake of ongoing valley development, poor salmon marine survival, climate change and much more — cannot be understated, Rosenau says.

“This is life or death for an entire ecosystem.”

A logged section of Herrling Island in February 2018. The channel to the left is among the most important white sturgeon habitat left on the entire Fraser River, providing critical spawning habitat during spring freshet. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

Why are the islands so important?

For all the Fraser salmon born in natal streams stretching from nearby Harrison Lake to the headwaters about 1,300 kilometres upstream, this lower Fraser habitat is a critical life-line for juveniles as they migrate to the estuary and into the Salish sea.

Today, 30 species of fish rear, spawn and migrate through this area — including the world’s biggest remaining run of pink salmon.

Then there’s the freshet. Each spring the islands are partially flooded, converting dry land into the perfect shallow-water habitat for rearing sturgeon and salmon. As the fish move onto these island shallows, they find food and protection from the fast-flowing floodwaters. In the case of Herrling Island, sturgeon spawn and rear in the narrow, long channel between the island and the mainland.

Such seasonally flooded habitats have become rare: most of the lower Fraser’s foreshore wetlands, marshes, islands and riparian forests have been logged, diked, drained and converted to farming since the arrival of settlers in the late 1800s.

Chinook stocks need this habitat

The situation is particularly dire for the Fraser chinook stocks that have collapsed or are approaching collapse. A late November 2018 assessment by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife In Canada (COSEWIC) found that seven stocks on the Fraser and the Thompson (a Fraser tributary) are endangered; four, including two on the lower Fraser, are threatened, and one is of special concern.

Mark Angelo, an advisory member on the board of the 100,000-member Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C., who has been named to both the Order of Canada and British Columbia for his river conservation work, says this island habitat is critical to the health of these fish if they are to recover.

“Pretty much every chinook that comes out of the Fraser spends time in and around these islands,” says Angelo, who is one of the leaders behind the push to organize an islands purchase. “From Herrling Island all the way down to Strawberry Island, you are talking hundreds of millions of juvenile salmon that rear within that space.”

The frozen back channel of Herrling Island, with the Cascade Mountains in the background. The new owners have applied to build a private bridge, which would destroy sturgeon habitat near this spot. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

Fraser chinook feed endangered killer whales

The same chinook that rear on the lower Fraser, will eventually migrate into the ocean, where they will become the primary food source for endangered southern resident killer whales.

Misty MacDuffee, a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s wild salmon program, says resident killer whales historically relied on Fraser chinook year-round, including during the spring, when more than 100,000 would return to the Fraser.

But in the last 20 years, the early-timed chinook runs from April to July have completely collapsed, she says. That’s why protecting the remnants of the lower Fraser’s critical floodplain habitat is now so critical.

“You can draw a straight line between the health of Fraser chinook and southern resident killer whales.”

How the islands ended up for sale

Back in summer 2017, Rosenau made inquiries and confirmed that Herrling and two other un-diked Fraser islands (nearby Carey island (500 hectares) and Strawberry Island (about 400 hectares, located near Mission) had been sold to three separate developers.

Prior to their sale, all three islands were owned by Krueger Products, a pulp and paper company, which operated super-fast-growing hybrid cottonwood plantations on Herrling, Carey and Strawberry islands.

From 1985 onwards, much of the land (then owned by Scott Paper) was mechanically cleared and later applied with as much as 30 tonnes per hectare of waste sludge from pulp mills and sewage treatment plants — including human “biosolid” fertilizer from Metro Vancouver’s Annacis Island wastewater plant — despite concerns about copper and endocrine-disrupting compounds in the waste. All of this in the name of growing pulp for toilet paper, manufactured at the New Westminster mill.

Impacted though they were, the plantation islands were never diked — meaning that the critical seasonal pulse of floodwater that creates such amazing fish habitat for months beginning around March remained intact.

When Krueger decided to sell the islands, there was an initial opportunity to purchase them for conservation, but when that fell through, Herrling was bought by a company run by the Klaassen family, a prominent Fraser Valley family that also owns Jake’s Gravel, one of the biggest gravel concerns in the valley. Carey Island was bought by members of the Guliker family, another valley family with large agricultural holdings. Strawberry is owned by a businessman with construction interests in Washington state and B.C.’s Lower Mainland. All three islands are now in the agricultural land reserve.

The challenges of building dikes and bridges

All three islands were heavily logged after purchase, especially the parcel on Strawberry Island, which has been scalped right to the banks.

The developers plan to convert each island into farmland to grow blueberries, livestock and other cash crops. But for this to happen, Rosenau says the next step will be to build bridges and dikes to enable year-round access.

Dikes do not come cheaply: at about $100,000 per metre, it could cost as much as $140 million to dike Herrling island alone — although the cost would be lower given the new owners’ existing construction and gravel companies.

Meanwhile the applications for permits to build private bridges to Herring and Carey islands continue to languish nearly two years after being filed with the province.

A spokesperson for the provincial Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said the two bridge applications remain undecided, and that time has been required to consult with local First Nations.

But an exchange in the legislature involving Environment Minister George Heyman indicated that the destruction of prized sturgeon habitat by bridge infrastructure is also an issue in the delay.

Much of un-diked Strawberry Island, near Mission, was clear-cut to the banks by the new owners. The island itself becomes important fish habitat for months on end during freshet; Nicomen Slough (in the foreground) also provides important rearing spots for juvenile chinook salmon and white sturgeon throughout the year. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

Ottawa orders ‘corrective measures’

In late November of last year, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans ordered the new owners of Herrling and Carey islands to take “corrective measures” for unspecified damage on their respective islands.

In an e-mail to The Narwhal, the department would not confirm what specifically the owners were correcting, or whether a wider investigation is ongoing. The spokesperson also wouldn’t comment on whether the federal government would permit dikes to be built around Carey or Herrling islands.

Rosenau thinks that skirting federal law will be a problem for the developers.

“Destroying that island [Herrling] is ‘serious harm’ [under the federal Fisheries Act],” he says. “You can’t put a dike there. And if you can’t put a dike there, that property is worth nothing.”

Klaassen Farms’ Jake Klaassen was not available to answer questions.

The alternative: buying the islands for conservation

Another potential future for Herrling and Carey is to be bought for conservation. Angelo confirmed that efforts are now afoot (with the participation of the Nature Conservancy of Canada and environmental groups like Watershed Watch Salmon Society) to pull together funding through a “private-public consortium.”

(The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development would not confirm if it is involved in funding efforts to buy the islands, other than saying, “the focus of the province remains on conservation and protection of environmental values of the area, regardless of ownership.”)

If enough money can be raised, Angelo says the goal will be to purchase, secure, protect and restore the two islands. This could eventually also include Strawberry Island.

“We have no interest in holding title ourselves,” wrote Angelo by e-mail on February 14. “Rather, it would be most appropriate if title was jointly held by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Stó:lō and other First Nations.

Coming to such an arrangement will be a complex political undertaking. The Fraser Valley is home to the Stó:lō Nation — a Chilliwack-based, political amalgamation of eleven Stó:lō communities along the lower Fraser, each with its own independent voice. The same goes for another eight local First Nations under the banner of the Stó:lō Tribal Council. Some local First Nations are not members of either.

Complicating the situation is the past friction between conservationists and some First Nations over gravel mining in the Fraser Valley — for example, local First Nations like Cheam and Seabird Island have in the past had relationships with the construction and gravel interests of the Klaassen family, who now own Herrling island.

Cheam First Nation Chief Ernie Crey and representatives of the Stó:lō Nation did not reply to requests for comment by press time.

The un-diked coast of Carey Island stands in contrast to the heavily armoured coastline — and it’s this lack of flood control that makes it such amazing fish habitat. Photo: Supplied.

Seabird Island not on board

Seabird Island First Nation Chief Clem Seymour says he has not been approached by Angelo or conservation interests about the islands to date. “They need to talk to our people though, because [Herrling island] is right at our front door,” he said.

Herrling Island takes its name from Seabird Island band member Elizabeth Herrling, who lived on the island highlands for about 40 years before moving back to the mainland, Seymour says.

Habitat loss is an important issue on the lower Fraser, he says, but the biggest cause is the build-up of gravel in the Heart of the Fraser — the removal of which prominent conservationists have fought to limit.

Seymour doesn’t think the conversion of Herrling to agriculture is a problem. “All it’s going to be used for is a blueberry farm,” he said, adding he doesn’t think a dike will be necessary. Concerns about the impact of dikes on fish habitat are a “scare tactic,” he says, used by conservationists to raise money to buy the islands.

“And I don’t know if [the island owners] are going to make very much money on it, they’ll probably spend a lot of years paying [for] that bridge.”

The view from Sts’ailes

Willy Charlie, a former chief, councillor and the current chief administrator for the nearby Sts’ailes First Nation, says they have already talked with Angelo about protecting the islands.

Sts’ailes’ traditional territory includes parts of the lower Fraser and Harrison River watershed — the latter being among the largest and best chinook salmon spawning areas left in the entire Fraser system. Charlie says a lot of the Harrison chinook rely on the health of the main-stem Fraser for their survival as they “run the gauntlet” on their way to the estuary and sea.

He says that Sts’ailes support the idea of protecting the two islands for fish habitat, and of creating some kind of title-sharing arrangement involving the First Nations of the lower Fraser. (A call to Chief Ralph Leon Jr. of Sts’ailes First Nation was not returned by deadline).

“We think this kind of arrangement, where we come together as a collective to look after fish habitat can happen and should happen,” he says. “We all have the same interest.”

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If you ask biologist Misty MacDuffee what is responsible for the plight of the West Coast’s iconic southern resident killer whale populations, she’ll narrow it down to two major factors: not enough salmon and too much noise.

The one-two punch of declining Chinook stocks and loud, bustling ports and shipping routes in the Salish Sea are the crux issues for the endangered species, MacDuffee told The Narwhal. And that’s without even mentioning toxic contamination that bioaccumulates in the blubber of orcas, which starving orcas metabolize, leaving them invisibly poisoned.

It’s also before introducing the issue of the embattled Trans Mountain pipeline that would introduce the further risks of oil spills and increased ship strikes into the mix as well as the additional underwater racket — known as “acoustic smog” — that would result from the project’s seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic.

The Trans Mountain pipeline project would triple the amount of oil shipped from Alberta to export terminals in Burnaby, B.C., and result in a jump from five to 34 tankers traversing the Burrard Inlet and Salish Sea each month.

Lummi Nation vessel (top) releases live fish ahead of J50 during feeding trials near San Juan Island on Aug. 12, 2018. Biologists in an orange NOAA Fisheries vessel follow. Photo: John Gussman / NOAA Fisheries, under permit 18786 via Flickr

The fatal exclusion

“We’ve done a population viability analysis that found the conditions in the Salish Sea cannot get any worse if we hope to recover these whales,” said MacDuffee, a scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, one of the organizations that successfully challenged the National Energy Board’s review of, and the federal government’s subsequent approval of, the Trans Mountain pipeline.

“That’s exactly what Trans Mountain would do: it would make the conditions in the Salish Sea worse.”

Only 75 individuals remain in the southern resident population. Low birth rates and calf mortality became a subject of renewed attention this summer after a newborn died and was carried by her mother for 17 days in what experts have described as a display of grief.

During the review stage of Trans Mountain the National Energy Board (NEB) excluded the marine shipping element from consideration of the project’s environmental impacts.

The exclusion was a fatal one: alongside the federal government’s failure to adequately consult First Nations it ultimately led Canada’s Federal Appeals Court to rule the project’s review was irredeemably flawed.

The court declared the project quashed in an unforgiving decision, delivered by Justice Eleanor Dawson:

“This finding — that the Project was not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects — was central to its report. The unjustified failure to assess the effects of Project-related shipping under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 and the resulting flawed conclusion about the environmental effects of the Project was critical to the decision of the Governor in Council [cabinet]. With such a flawed report before it, the Governor in Council could not legally make the kind of assessment of the Project’s environmental effects and the public interest that the legislation requires.”

“The NEB made one fatal error which they compounded over time as they deliberated and as this went to cabinet,” Chris Tollefson, lawyer with the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation, said.

“It undermined the whole exercise because that was a fundamental question they were bound to assess, they were bound to make a recommendation on,” he said.

Had the NEB considered that question, Tollefson said, they would certainly have found Trans Mountain would have significant, adverse effects on this population.

“Then we would have had a clear answer.”

The death of Trans Mountain pipeline signals future of Indigenous rights: Chiefs

Excluding marine shipping impacts from the project’s review limited what experts, scientists and conservation groups could raise as evidence during the Trans Mountain hearings. And simultaneously allowed government and industry to avoid the responsibility of articulating their plans for how they would mitigate the impacts of increased tanker traffic on an endangered marine species.

“They canned the part of the review that would have dealt with the terminal and tanker traffic,” MacDuffee said.

Research conducted by MacDuffee and her colleagues at Raincoast found the noise from tanker traffic alone would result in a 24 per cent chance of the southern resident killer whale population becoming functionally extinct over the next 100 years.

If you add in the risk of oil spills and ship strikes, the probability of extinction within 100 years jumps to 50 per cent.

“This is the piece of Trans Mountain that nobody was getting,” MacDuffee told The Narwhal.

A likely trade-off of the pipeline and tanker project is a loss of this unique population, she said.

“This is a dialogue Canadians have not had,” MacDuffee said.

“They not being told they’re making a choice between a population of iconic killer whales or pushing through this pipeline. The cost of this project has not been a part of the dialogue.”

Ignoring Canada’s protection for at risk species

Dyna Tuytel, lawyer with Ecojustice, the law firm that represented Raincoast and co-applicant, the Living Oceans Society, told The Narwhal that the recent Federal Court of Appeal ruling means new hearings will have to take place on the subject of marine shipping and impacts to marine life.

“We know the National Energy Board identified noise from shipping as a significant, adverse environmental effect,” Tuytel explained, “and they also identified the risk of oil spills.”

“But the board didn’t think it was its responsibility to deal with those things and didn’t deal with whether or how those impacts could be mitigated.”

Impacts on the southern resident killer whale population was considered under the National Energy Board Act but not under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, “where special considerations have to be taken into account,” she said.

If any significant, adverse environmental effects of a project are found under the Environmental Assessment Act, those effects must be justified by the final decision-makers on the project — federal cabinet.

“They would have to explain why those significant effects are worth it,” Tuytel said, adding under the act government would also be required to ensure measures are being taken to lessen or avoid the impacts on endangered species.

However MacDuffee argues there are no measures that can be taken to lessen the impacts of a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic in the habitat of the southern resident population.

“Oil spills and ship strikes are probabilities…noise is a certainty. Noise is the product of moving tankers — it’s inherent in moving tankers through the Salish Sea.”

Raincoast modelling found that the increase in tanker traffic would mean a “near-continuous presence” of vessel traffic in the whale’s habitat.

“They’ll be in the presence of a vessel — everything from a large ship to small whale watching vessels — more than 90 per cent of the time,” MacDuffee said.

“There are no scenarios under existing technology where Trans Mountain goes ahead where we hope to recover killer whales.”

She added Canada’s Species At Risk Act has all but been ignored in this case.

“We would argue that the Species At Risk Act deems that if you can’t mitigate then your project can’t go ahead.”

Facing down current threats

Just days after the Federal Court of Appeals ruling, Ecojustice launched a new court challenge in an attempt to force emergency measures from Canada’s ministers responsible for the southern resident killer whale population — Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna and Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

“Under the Species At Risk Act if a species is found to be facing an imminent threat there’s an automatic trigger — it’s mandatory the ministers must act,” Megan Leslie, executive director of WWF Canada, litigant in the new case, told The Narwhal.

Additional applicants in the case are Raincoast, the David Suzuki Foundation, the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council and the Georgia Strait Alliance.

There is no disagreement between government and the scientific and conservation community that this population is facing an imminent threat, Leslie said.

In early 2018 the groups filed a petition with the federal government, asking for an emergency order to protect the whales.

Since then, the federal government has introduced new measures aimed at protecting the species. But the efforts — including announcing the Oceans’ Protection Plan, small fisheries closures and identifying new critical habitat protections — have been roundly criticized as inadequate.

“Most of what we’ve seen has been announcements around funding and research,” Tuytel said. “Very little has been concrete, enforceable and timely.”

A new rule to keep whale watching vessels 200 metres from the endangered population took 10 years to implement, Tuytel said.

How Canada is Driving Its Endangered Species to the Brink of Extinction

In the court’s decision on the Trans Mountain review, Ottawa’s proposed action plan for the southern resident population and the Oceans’ Protection Plan were called “inchoate initiatives” that by themselves are “insufficient” in the face of the project’s inadequate review.

“If the government was serious there would be a Chinook fishery closure,” Leslie said. “We don’t see government taking that legislation seriously or helping these whales in a timely and critical manner.”

“This didn’t happen this weekend. This didn’t happen this summer. These whales were listed under the Species At Risk Act in 2003,” she said.

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Under the waves of Haro Strait, hydrophones record the noise made by passing vessels and, if you happen to be a whale, the din is already disorienting and disturbing, making it difficult to echo-locate food or communicate with other members of the pod.

“It’s a thunder. Thump, thump, thump, accompanied by squeals and engine noise. It’s like being under the hood of a hot-rod,” said Howard Garrett, president of Orca Network, the Washington State group that tracks the comings and goings of the 80 remaining members of the endangered southern resident killer whales.

All recent studies of the resident pods have identified marine noise around the Strait of Georgia and Juan de Fuca Strait as one of the stressors threatening their survival, in addition to lack of Chinook salmon — the whales’ favourite prey — contaminants accumulating in their blubber and degradation of their critical habitat.

Now, with federal approval of the Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the situation for the whales is about to get much worse and experts are predicting that the fragile population, which spends about six months a year in the Salish Sea, will not be able to survive the onslaught of tankers.

The number of tankers travelling from the pipeline terminal in Burnaby through Burrard Inlet, around the Gulf Islands and into Juan de Fuca Strait will increase from about five a month to about 34 a month and, while the increased chance of an oil spill is stomach-churning for marine scientists, the damage from increased tanker noise is equally alarming.

“We don’t need to have an oil spill to have significant adverse effects — and no one is disputing that, not the National Energy Board, not Kinder Morgan and not federal scientists,” said Misty MacDuffee, Raincoast Conservation Foundation biologist.

To a whale, it does not matter whether a tanker is empty or laden, meaning the animals will have to deal with a 700 per cent increase, made up of more than 800 inbound and outbound tanker trips every year, MacDuffee said.

Two years ago Raincoast called together top scientists with specialities in endangered populations and acoustics to do an analysis of the viability of the three pods of whales and the conclusion was that the population was on a precipice and could go either way, MacDuffee said.

“They said they cannot endure any more of these stressors.”

The whales are already in the presence of some kind of vessel, ranging from small boats to ferries and tankers, for 85 per cent of the time and, with the additional tankers, they will be in the presence of a vessel 100 per cent of the time, MacDuffee said.

Sound travels four times faster in the water than in the air and it will diminish the ability of the whales to locate their food, which is already in short supply.

“They use echolocation when they are feeding, so they are sending out little clicks and chirps to find individual fish and estimate the size of it and where it is in the water column and then communicate with the pod on how to catch it,” MacDuffee said.

“Our research shows a decrease in efficiency in the presence of vessels, so that translates into less food,” she said.

Insufficient food is believed to have been one of the elements in the latest death among the whales. J28 died in October and it is believed her 10-month-old calf has also died, unable to survive without his mother’s milk to supplement his catch.

“Poor, poor whales. They are just surrounded and bombarded on all sides,” said whale researcher Paul Spong of OrcaLab, a whale research station on Hanson Island, off northern Vancouver Island.

“It’s oil or orcas — take your pick…I think the risks are too great.”

The possibility of a spill is the biggest threat and, as seen in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez spill, that would be disastrous, but noise will also affect their survival, Spong said.

Already, regulations are needed to restrict whale watching vessels and the noise levels of ships, but the government has ignored recommended amendments to marine mammal regulations, Spong said, suggesting one of the first moves should be to severely restrict the speed of vessels travelling through the area.

“The whales are having a difficult time finding food to eat and now, if you shave a little bit more away from them, you are having a big impact on their ability to survive,” he said.

Spong shrugged off a claim by Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc that there would be only a one per cent increase in the noise level and said that was simply an acknowledgement that there would be an impact.

LeBlanc, in an interview with CBC Radio, said initially there might be a one per cent increase in noise, but a critical piece of getting the project right, is to ensure there is no increase in noise.

The whales are under pressure from lack of prey and coming into contact with ships of all sorts, so the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has put together an action plan under the Species at Risk Act, LeBlanc told CBC.

“We’re going to do a lot more to protect that whale population and, in fact, you’ll have a very comprehensive action plan in the new year based on 11,000 public suggestions,” he said.

The NEB found that there would be “significant adverse effects” on the southern resident killer whales from the additional tankers, but, as echoed by the Liberal government, suggested they could be mitigated.

In answer to questions from DeSmog Canada a spokesman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada said DFO recognizes the need to address the cumulative effect of all marine traffic in the area.

Before any shipping from the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project begins, the government will work to reduce impacts on southern resident killer whales in four areas, he said in an emailed statement.

Those include reducing cumulative noise from marine traffic with both voluntary and mandatory strategies, reducing chemical and biological pollutants, improving food supply by restoring coastal salmon habitat and new research to establish baselines.

“The objective is to more than mitigate for the impact of additional Trans Mountain marine traffic before the project begins operations,” the statement reads.

As part of the 157 binding conditions placed on the Kinder Morgan pipeline’s approval, the proponent will be required to develop a marine mammal protection program and support the measures identified in the Southern Resident Killer Whale Action Plan.

Also, the recently-announced $1.5-billion investment in the Oceans Protection Plan will help address the cumulative effects of shipping on marine mammals, according to the statement.

However, MacDuffee said, although ship noise can be reduced, there are currently no requirements to make engines and propellers quiet. She added it would take years to bring in legislation for new ships and to insist older ships are retrofitted.

The fight is likely to continue in the courts as Raincoast and the Living Oceans Society have already applied for a judicial review of the NEB’s report recommending approval of the pipeline expansion, saying the NEB failed to apply the Species At Risk Act.

The organization is now looking at the possibility of a second legal action.

Opponents on both sides of the border are vowing to battle the federal government’s decision and Garrett said there may be lessons from Washington State where the Cherry Point coal export terminal was stopped because of tribal and public opposition and litigation.

Image: NOAA

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Underwater shipping noise in the Salish Sea is likely making it difficult for endangered southern resident killer whales to find food and could threaten their survival, according to a team of U.S. scientists.
 
A new, two-year study, published in the academic journal Peer J, used underwater microphones to take 3,000 noise measurements as 1,600 individual ships passed through the Washington State side of Haro Strait.
 
The study site is in the middle of critical habitat for the fish-eating southern resident killer whales and researchers found shipping noise extended to middle and high frequencies used by killer whales to echo-locate prey. Killer whales emit a series of clicking sounds and then listen for the bounce-back echoes in order to find fish.
 
The researchers found the growth in commercial shipping has raised the intensity of low-frequency noise almost 10-fold since the 1960s and there is growing evidence that it is affecting the communication ability of baleen whales, such as humpbacks, gray whales and right whales.

The paper was authored by Scott Veirs from Beam Reach Marine Science and Sustainability School in Seattle, Val Veirs from Colorado College physics department and Jason Wood of SMRU Consulting in Friday Harbor, Washington.
 
The question the team set out to answer was whether ship noise extended to higher frequencies used by toothed whales, such as killer whales, and could therefore pose similar threats to them and other marine life such as dolphins and porpoises.
 
“Because these orcas, like other toothed whales, use mid and high frequencies to communicate and find their prey, the study measured a wide range of frequencies. The results show that ships are responsible for elevated background noise levels, not only at low frequencies, as expected, but also at medium and higher frequencies, including at 20,000 Hz where killer whales hear best,” Scott Veirs said.
 
“This means that in coastal environments where marine mammals live within a few kilometres of shipping lanes, ship noise has the potential to interfere with both communication and echolocation.”
 
The study looked at a wide range of ship types and found container ships had the highest median noise levels and military vessels, most of which use noise-suppression technology, had the lowest levels.
 
“We saw a lot of variability in noise levels, both between and within the 12 classes of ships we studied,” Veirs said in an interview
 
“That variability suggests that investments in quieting technologies may efficiently lower the median noise levels for many types of ships.”
 
The researchers also found that, if ships slow down, the noise level is substantially reduced.
 
“For example, a three knot decrease in speed could cut in half the acoustic power emitted by the ship,” he said.
 
The three pods of southern resident killer whales, which spend much of their time in the Salish Sea, are the stars of a multi-million dollar ecotourism and whale-watching industry on both sides of the border.
 
The southern residents eat mainly chinook salmon — unlike transient/Biggs killer whales, which eat marine mammals and offshore populations which rely on a shark diet — and it is essential for their survival that they be able to locate sufficient salmon, which are already in short supply.
 
Government studies in the U.S. and Canada previously identified noise, pollution and lack of salmon as the main threats facing the southern residents.
 
The three pods struggled to recover after decades of whaling, followed by captures for marine parks in the 1960s and 1970s and, despite a nine-birth baby boom over the last year, the population stands at only 85 individuals. The first-year survival rate for calves is about 50 per cent.
 
The study by Veirs and his colleagues is raising questions not only about current noise levels, but what will happen if the dozen oil and coal terminal expansion projects, now proposed for areas around the Salish Sea, get the go-ahead.
 
The proposals include controversial plans to twin Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, which would mean a massive increase in oil tankers travelling through the area. It is estimated the number of tankers could increase to about 400 a year from 70 a year.
 
“The main effect of the proposed development within the Salish Sea may be to further reduce the amount of quiet time our local species enjoy — those periods when ship and boat noise are not part of their environment,” Veirs said.
 
“Our results confirm that currently about 20 ships a day transit the critical habitat of the southern resident killer whales. Adding just four ships per day would mean that, on average, there would be a ship every hour of the day throughout the year.”

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Vessel noise is already hindering endangered southern resident killer whales from communicating and finding fish and the noise bombardment will get worse if proposals for coal terminals and pipelines in B.C and Washington State are approved, said scientists and environmentalists at a conference looking at the health of the Salish Sea.

"Ships dominate the soundscape of Puget Sound," said Scott Veirs, Beam Reach Marine Sciences and Sustainability School program coordinator and professor, speaking at the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference.

Veirs and his students take underwater sound recordings off Lime Kiln Park on San Juan Island, an area where the killer whales are known to spend time, and then model the echo-location and communication consequences for the resident killer whales. The resident killer whale population has dropped this year to 80 animals in three pods, the lowest number in more than a decade.

Sounds of swooshes, rattles and bangs echoed through the room as Veirs demonstrated noises surrounding the whales every day and audience members covered their ears as he played the screeching and metallic grindings made by a ship with a damaged propeller.

"At least one ship is present about 40 per cent of the time and when that ship is going through it reduces the range that whales can communicate by 68 per cent," Veirs said.

That means the whales miss about 37 per cent of calls and, if traffic doubles – as it could with increases in oil tankers from twinning the Kinder Morgan pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby and with 21 per cent more carriers and barges from proposed coal terminal expansions in B.C. and Washington – it is estimated the whales will miss 44 per cent of the calls, he said.

Current noise levels mean whales are already finding almost 50 per cent less fish than they would otherwise and a doubling of traffic would increase that to 58 per cent, Veirs said.

The noise is having a significant impact as chinook salmon is already scarce, Veirs said.

Canadian and U.S. government studies have pinpointed lack of salmon – and particularly the whales' preferred diet of chinook – noise and pollution as the major threats faced by the resident killer whales.

Juvenile chinook salmon. Photo by Roger Tabor, USFWS.

Ship owners should be offered incentives to properly maintain their vessels and the noise could be mitigated by ships slowing down or rerouting through Rosario instead of Haro Strait, Veirs suggested.

"Every knot you slow down, you come down about one noise level," he said.

However, that would mean more time in the vicinity of the whales, which would increase the possibility of oil spills, he said.

Concerns about shipping noise changing the whales' behaviour was echoed by Marla Holt, research wildlife biologist with the U.S National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Vessel noise affects acoustic signals that are important for foraging, Holt said.

"The behavioural changes in response to vessels is quite concerning as one of them is decreased foraging," she said.

NOAA used digital acoustic recording tags, temporarily attached to whales with suction cups, to estimate noise levels.

The minimum noise level recorded, with two stationary and one slow boat in the vicinity, was 88 decibels and the maximum, with a large ferry less than 300 metres away, was 141 decibels, Holt said. Sound charts equate 140 decibels with the sounds of a jet engine at 100 feet.

Last year, the behaviour of the whales was different than in previous years, said Jenny Atkinson, executive director of The Whale Museum in Friday Harbour, Washington.

The Whale Museum documented sightings in the Salish Sea and found that, especially during the summer, when the whales typically spend their time around Juan de Fuca Strait, Haro Strait and the Strait of Georgia, the animals spent more time off the west coast of Vancouver Island and did not get together to socialize in their traditional areas.

It is not known whether the behaviour changes are connected to salmon runs or noise, but the result is that no one is observing the greeting ceremonies or the three pods coming together in a superpod, Atkinson said.

"They're not spending too much time socializing and making babies," she said.

The only calf born in 2013 washed up dead and no births have yet been reported this year.

An additional problem is that southern residents reproduce more slowly than northern residents, possibly because of lack of prey availability or contamination, said Dawn Noren of NOAA.

But other whale populations are doing well, with increases in the northern resident and transient killer whale populations and a resurgence of humpback populations, Atkinson said.

"So what is going on with the southern residents?" she asked.

Howard Garrett of Orca Network has watched the changing behaviour and believes prey availability is the most likely cause.

"It may be that it's not just lack of food on the inside, but an abundance on the outside," he said.

The whales appear to like the protection of inland waters as it allows them to congregate, but that will likely start happening again once they are well fed, Garrett said.

Superpods are important for mating as there are strict rules within the pods that do not permit mating with family members, Garrett said.

"Maybe they're having superpods off the west coast, but the chance of that seems slighter because of the rougher water," he said.

Image Credit: vijay_SRV via Flickr

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On April 1, 2013 Canada will lose its sole marine contaminants research program. The loss comes as a part of a massive dismantling of science programs at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced in May of 2012. 

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When the Harper government announced deep funding cuts to science programs across the country, the Institute of Ocean Sciences, one of Canada's largest marine institutes located in Sidney, B.C., was among those research outfits hurt as a result. Lead research scientist Peter Ross is one of more than one thousand Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) employees who discovered their position had been terminated.

Peter Ross is no lab coat-wearing, science nerd. At least, not entirely. He’s an oceanic adventurer and Canada’s preeminent orca expert. He discovered things about West Coast orcas that have transformed common marine mammal knowledge around the globe.  

Orcas on the west coast of British Columbia will no longer be monitored for contamination once Peter Ross' research concludes this spring. Come April Canada will no longer have a federal marine contaminants research program anywhere in the nation. Photo credit: Brian Grisborne, used with permission.

When you dismantle science and research programs, says Ross, you are doing much more than limiting your capacity for science and research: you restrict your capacity to engage with your environment, the source of social well-being and a flourishing economy. And you cripple your decision-making capabilities by disregarding the line that separates fact-driven, science-based decision-making from ideology or profit.

And that’s what bothers Ross so much about the Harper government’s recent decision to shutter many of Canada’s prestigious scientific institutions. It’s not simply a matter of budgetary restraint or the restructuring of federal bodies. It limits science pursued in the public interest.

This is part 1 of an interview with Peter Ross. Part 2 available here.

Carol Linnitt: Hello, Peter. So, let me jump right in. The reason I’m calling is because I’d like to talk to you about the cancelled funding for the Institute of Ocean Sciences.

Peter Ross: Yes, so the Institute will still be open, it's a large Institute, but the marine contaminants program has been axed.

CL: And has that already happened?

[view:in_this_series=block_1]

PR: We're still here, but we're winding down, so, in effect, probably by the springtime we'll be shut down.

CL: And how many employees will that be? I know that you’re heralded as Canada’s only marine mammal toxicologist, but is there a team that you work with?

PR: Yes, there are 55 full time staff nationally that consist of scientists, technicians and chemists, and they’re scattered across the country. There’s nine of us here in Sidney, B.C., probably the same number in Winnipeg for the Arctic, and then a number in Rimouski, Quebec, and a few in a couple of spots in the Maritimes.

CL: And so by the time the spring hits, all of those . . .

PR: Will be gone. Probably one quarter are already gone.

CL: So what happens when these positions get cut? Are scientists fired? Are they moved into new positions?

PR: That will vary. Essentially you get a letter saying that your services are no longer required, and you have three choices. One is to resign, and you've got 120 days to do so. Another is to take educational leave, which gives you two years of leave without pay, to go to school again and retrain, and then you can come back and re-apply for a new position. The third is you can apply for a position that may be open in the government right now. But you would have to work on something other than what you trained for.

CL: And what positions are coming open right now?

PR: Well there's a fair bit of downsizing in the government right now, so there aren’t a lot of jobs coming open. And for some, like myself, who are trained as research scientists, there are really no jobs coming open. I've been told that my expertise is not wanted within the government. So that’s sort of a mixed answer. I think some of the technical staff will be more likely to find success regaining employment within government because they’re a bit more versatile in terms of training. But for someone like me, no, there’s very little hope that there will be any position for me, unless I want to go into management.

CL: What’s the difference between a technician and a research scientist?

PR: Training. A research scientist has a Ph.D., and within the government your job is to do ground breaking research, which you publish in international journals. You become the government’s expert in that field, so you are appraised every year in terms of your performance, And your performance is based on the number of publications you appear in and their impact on public policy. A technician may be someone working in a laboratory or in the field, but in a supporting role for a research program, led by the research scientist.

CL: Does that mean that if there’s an overall reduction in research positions, Canada is taking a step back as a country within the international scientific community?

PR: Well, you know science is a funny thing, and it’s often hard to do justice in defining it or describing it to a lay-audience. I think science is different things to different people. When I look at the kind of research that I do, I work for the government. I work for the Crown. I work for the taxpayer. I work on projects for which I have to raise and attract money. These are projects that ultimately help us to manage and protect our oceans. So when I look at the work that I am interested in getting involved in, or that I’ve attracted funds to support. I’m ultimately asking, ‘Does it help me to better understand the ocean? Will it empower us to manage or protect our ocean resources?’

If I were at a university I might do similar research, but I’m less likely to be wed to the idea that I have to protect Canada or Canadian natural resources. Or that I have to work within the confines of a mission, a mandate, and legislative framework such as the Oceans Act, Species at Risk Act or Fisheries Act. So the way I go about science will be similar to an academic, but the context and the implications of my work will differ quite a bit, because I am on the hook and responsible for a certain file. If it emerges as an issue in Canada, if there is a public outcry about a certain chemical, process or industry, and the minister’s office calls down for advice from us, or need answers fast, I would be one of those people that would have to jump. If I was at university, I wouldn’t be compelled to do the same

CL: So your position is where the scientific rubber meets the policy road?

PR: I think so, yes. Ultimately, the government isn’t in the position of just spending money on research and development for the sake of spending money on science and knowledge. It likes to know what kind of research gets done and that it will improve the government’s ability to protect Canadians, wildlife, natural resources, Canadian sovereignty, all of those things. And that would be different for a faculty member at a university. They might have such aims, but they are not required to think in those terms.

CL: I see. I was speaking with Andrew Weaver from the university of Victoria recently, and he broke the nature of science production into three categories: industry-funded science, academic curiosity-driven science, and government taxpayer-funded science in the interest of the public good. He said that if we’re seeing reductions in science being pursued for the public good, then science really gets left to industry and the academy, and neither of those have the same obligation to the public and to taxpayers.

PR: Well that’s right. Industry is not going to say, “I want to look at all ninety thousand chemicals on the Canadian market, and every problem in the ocean.”  What industrial sector is going to pick up that file? None. What industry can be very good at is monitoring certain effluents, or a pipe that’s discharging contaminants within a certain sector – something that’s really focused on a certain activity. Otherwise why would they pay for it? They’re only going to pay for the kind of monitoring or research that has a direct bearing on the performance of their specific economic sector.

That’s where government science is very different. I am, for example, looking at marine mammals and marine mammals aren’t being contaminated because of a single sector. They are getting contaminated because of thousands of different sources of thousands of different chemicals in Canada, the United States, and internationally. And so, all these chemicals are essentially accidents or mistakes or processes that are leading to contamination of the ocean, and some of these chemicals build up in food webs and mammals.

Someone like me comes along and says, “Okay, that’s what I’m finding, now what does that mean? Is it affecting the health of the population? And if so, where is this chemical or that chemical, or that other chemical coming from? Is it banned in Canada? Is it used as a pesticide in agriculture? Has it come from pulp mills? Does it come from sewage effluents?” And then we track these things down and work with regulators in Ottawa and Washington, D.C. We would also potentially work with the industry that is producing the compound, or releasing it. We work with regional governments, and the province. So ultimately, what we try to do within government is that kind of 'ecosystem' approach to science, or habitat-based approach to science. That approach would be of little interest to an industrial sector. It’s highly focused.

CL: So if we’re talking about something like research into contaminants in marine species, and we see a large reduction in research scientist positions, what will happen? Does it get dropped? Does it mean that we’ll no longer be studying this issue?

PR: That’s correct.

CL: So, no one is studying the contamination of marine environments and mammals once you close up?

PR: Well it’s up to whomever to do whatever they want right now. There is no leadership, there’s no guidance, there’s no instruction, there’s no requirement. The only thing that’s going to make somebody interested in working on this is going to be money. Who’s going provide the money?  This kind of work is very expensive. You can’t go out in the ocean and understand what’s going on without access to boats, expensive sampling gear and partners in multiple sectors to help you understand all the other processes that are important from the perspective of pollution. This applies whether it's ocean currents, ocean productivity, or the life history of different species or food web structures.

The lab work is very expensive. We have two lines of research that we have been applying routinely in our study designs. One is, what are the health implications of the chemicals to which they're exposed? That’s toxicology. That’s looking at the health of salmon, the health of seals, the health of killer whales, and it is very difficult, very expensive work. The other involves what chemicals they are exposed to. That’s chemistry. We have to get samples from animals, measure those chemicals, and it can cost two thousand dollars to measure a single sample. So if we eliminate these programs, the work is going to be left up to people other than government, which means universities or industry. Somebody might do something, but are they going to be compelled to be responsible for everything? No.

CL: It’s not just your outfit that’s had its funding cut and positions lost. This is happening all across Canada, with similar research. What is the significance of that for Canada?

PR: Well I think that it’s easy to ignore research and science when one is operating in the mainstream of Canadian public life or society.  We often don’t see the immediate benefits or applications of science. I think we forget that the well being of our human population, our quality of life, is largely dependent on a healthy environment. And I think we often forget that it’s scientific research that has led us to discover and uncover a lot of that wealth and to harness it. But we ignore it when that same science also identifies limits to our wealth generation, development, or ways in which we can channel development so that it’s constructive and not negatively impacting aspects of society or the economy.

I think we often forget the inherent and intrinsic value of science and how it does, and has, contributed to the Canada we know today. If we start to ignore scientists and the expertise within the Canadian scientific establishment, we will be losing the ability to manage our future success, the ability to understand threats to the Canadian way and the ability to adapt and grow. We will, I think, lose a little bit of control over our future. It’s by having our finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the ocean, the freshwater environment or terrestrial habitats that allows us to provide advice that will help us manage those things and to maintain vibrant economies associated with the coastal waters, the oceans, freshwater ecosystems, or terrestrial environments. So I think it’s diminishing our ability to adapt, to manage, to predict, and to maintain the investment that we have in the Canadian way of life.

Read Part 2 of Retreat from Science.

Cover Image Credit: Lizzy Moss, used with permission.

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