As a child growing up in the 小蓝视频 interior, Tasli Shaw was fascinated by stories of the Ogopogo, a legendary monster said to live in Lake Okanagan. She couldn’t have known she would end up working with real-life gigantic sea creatures: humpback whales.
Playful and intelligent giants of the sea, humpbacks are now almost common sightings from 小蓝视频 Ferries crossings or whale-watching tours. But for most of the 20th century, they were absent from southern 小蓝视频’s inland waterways, hunted out by industrial whaling by 1910. Their seemingly miraculous return has been eagerly documented by a large, informal workforce of citizen scientists around the Salish Sea, from qathet Regional District to American waters in Puget Sound and everywhere in-between.
But despite the cetacean success story, people in coastal communities are concerned by increasing pressures on the animals in a region home to nearly 10 million people on both sides of the border, and one of the busiest shipping lanes in North America.
Shaw is now based out of Vancouver Island’s Cowichan Bay as a marine naturalist, where she’s been witness to the humpbacks’ remarkable resurgence. Using photo-identification, she runs a which catalogues every whale reported in the Salish Sea by their unique tails and fins.
She said citizen science—data collection by the public or those not formally scientifically trained—is key to the work. However, she added that getting community buy-in is sometimes a challenge due to the seemingly minimal return of contributing sightings which some perceive as just “disappearing into the database” without a tangible reward
“Researchers cannot be everywhere all at once,” said Shaw. “We rely on the many people who have their eyes on the water here—it’s critical to get the most comprehensive picture possible.”
On Saturna Island, about 20 miles as the humpback swims from Shaw’s base in Cowichan Bay, a community group has made it their mission to have as many eyes on the water as possible. Maureen Welton, co-founder and president of the island’s citizen science organization , said the goal is to support researchers and gather data which otherwise can’t be obtained.
“If a researcher is here doing a project, there’s a good chance they’re going to be here in the summer, for a couple months,” said Welton, who has been based on Saturna for 20 years. “Whereas our observers are here 24/7 and they’re watching all the time.”
One of SIMRES’ many projects is the Southern Gulf Islands Whale Sighting Network, for which about 100 residents of Saturna, Pender, Mayne and Galiano islands act as observers. Members of the network record and report all whale sightings to researchers, as well as to slow down for pods in shipping lanes. All mariners are required to keep at least 100 metres away from humpbacks and 400 metres away from orcas to avoid stressing or harming the animals.
SIMRES also watches small vessel activity, after realizing that Transport Canada monitoring of boat traffic in protected marine zones did not include recreational boaters.
“We had the data to show the difference,” said Welton, noting that without local observers, government agencies may end up making decisions based on limited snapshots of data.
Saturna was at the forefront of whale research in the 1970s, with the island’s East Point still legendary for orca sightings. But the history of whale conservation in 小蓝视频 actually goes back much further.
In the 1910s, captain Jack Cates ran a whale-watching outfit off Bowen Island. Upon the proposed opening of whaling in the Strait of Georgia, Cates wrote to his MP in protest, saying that not only did all living things have a right to protection, but “the extermination of whales from these waters would seriously interfere with our local trade.”
His plea was unsuccessful, and in just three years humpback whales disappeared from the Strait, hunted for their bones, blubber and meat. They would not return for over 80 years.
“There’s a lot of generational information with humpbacks,” said Joan Moreaux, a U小蓝视频 graduate student who recently completed her thesis on the food web of Georgia Strait humpbacks. Local humpbacks migrate to the strait from their winter breeding grounds in Mexico or Hawaii, staying in 小蓝视频 waters from spring to early fall feeding on krill and herring.
Moreaux explained that calves, once grown, are most likely to frequent the same summer feeding grounds they were first introduced to by their mothers. Because of the decimation of the strait’s humpbacks during the years of whaling, “That part of the subpopulation, they weren’t able to pass that knowledge [of the migration route] down.”
But now, “They’re not just swimming through here on their way to Alaska,” explained Shaw, addressing a long-held perception about 小蓝视频’s humpback comeback. “We actually have locals who come here every year. They’re like our neighbours.”
The first “neighbour” to venture back into the Salish Sea was a matriarch known as “” in 1997. She has brought back each of her seven calves, and many of the humpbacks who frequent the area today are part of her dynasty.
Following Big Mama’s initial appearance, numbers of humpbacks reported have slowly but steadily increased. In 2022, the most recent comprehensive data available, 396 individual whales were catalogued in the Salish Sea.
Up the coast, in Telegraph Cove, longtime North Island resident and Whale Interpretive Centre chairman Jim Borrowman helped pioneer whale photo-identification. Trained by Dr. Michael Biggs, who developed the system, Borrowman collected footage of orcas and humpbacks above and underwater, all with film cameras.
Over his 50 years of experience with whales, Borrowman, now 75, has gone from rarely seeing humpbacks to frequently spotting dozens from his sea-facing front windows. But he said he’s still concerned about human pressures on whales in the region, especially as the Trans Mountain Pipeline’s completion means more tanker traffic.
According to a 2021 by Clear Seas, a nonprofit researching marine shipping, approximately 11 large commercial vessels transit Juan de Fuca Strait every day. The pipeline’s completion brought the number of oil tankers in that fleet from one every two weeks to approximately one a day.
Welton said Gulf Islanders are acutely aware of the risks to the humpbacks’ hard-won recovery. As such, all volunteers with SIMRES complete a training process before joining the ranks of Saturna’s citizen scientists.
Welton said the organization advocates for whale watching from shore as much as possible, due to the distress that boat noise can cause to marine life. Along Saturna’s rocky coast, SIMRES’ —underwater microphones which record whale vocalizations—often pick up the rhythmic drumming of engines drowning out orca and humpback song.
“We’re really at this intersection of whales coming through a fairly narrow channel and into the Strait of Georgia,” said Welton. “All of the traffic going to the Port of Vancouver or the Port of Bellingham comes through here.”
Ship strikes can pose a significant risk to whales. Marine biologist Tasli Shaw recalled observing a congregation of over 100 humpbacks: “Just everywhere you looked, 360 degrees around, constant blows…this was basically directly adjacent to the shipping lane, which made me queasy.”
Entanglement in stray ropes or fishing gear also endangers whales. A 2024 found three humpback deaths related to snarls in fish-farm nets, and couldn’t quantify the number of whales that sink and are never found after entanglement. Researchers are also concerned about the negative impacts of on whale health.
Citizen science and ecotourism complement each other for Vancouver Island-born-and-raised Simon Pidcock, who runs, a whale watching company with locations in Cowichan Bay and Parksville. Like many ecotourism operators, he and his staff log all whale sightings and share their data with researchers. They also incorporate conservation messages into all their tours.
Pidcock said for clients who are open to those messages, combined with seeing whales for the first time, “They’re never going to forget that. They leave with that and it kind of pulls back to their everyday life…their individual actions.”
As well as providing critical data and education, citizen science brings people together, said Pidcock. “That whale world is really small, but it’s super interconnected as well.”
Welton agreed with that sentiment.
“We’ve built this really great community, which is really enjoying doing this volunteer work but is also contributing a lot to the science,” she said. “There’s a we’re-in-this-together factor that makes people enjoy being part of it.”
As well as camaraderie between citizen scientists, many also feel a connection to the individual whales they observe.
“Because we see them again and again, it’s like an old friend coming by,” said Welton. “Yeah, it’s science, but it also feels like you’re dealing with someone you know.”
For Moreaux, the humpbacks’ return is a success story that deserves to be protected. While research suggests the population is at healthy levels, she cautioned that they are still designated “special concern” under the Species at Risk Act.
“But we can see this as a positive,” said Moreaux. “We always talk about conservation when it’s really sad and we’re really trying to save a population. But all of the efforts we’ve made in protecting humpbacks brought back the population into the Salish Sea.”
“You protect what you love,” said Welton, speaking of the rich diversity of the Salish Sea. “And the best chance for us not to lose it, is to know more about it.”
Cara Gordon, who is from Vancouver, is a journalism and humanities student at Carleton University in Ottawa.
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