Fisheries and Oceans Canada has launched measures to try and protect endangered orcas on the West Coast from rising risk of oil spills, indicate federal documents obtained by Canada’s National Observer through access-to-information legislation. The fisheries department (DFO) has invested in vessels and acoustic gear, drafted an operating procedure for fishery officers, maintains community equipment caches and conducts training exercises led by a marine mammal response team that includes the use of underwater speakers to deter whales from entering a spill zone, the documents show. The information surfaced after prompts from environmental groups unable to find public information about the federal government’s plans to protect southern resident killer whales from potentially “catastrophic” oil spills in their critical habitat.
Tanker traffic in the Salish Sea surged after the expanded Trans Mountain (TMX) pipeline came online in May. The legal charity Ecojustice filed a petition to the ministries of Environment and Climate Change Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada to see the status of promised measures to protect the estimated 72 remaining whales if crude oil shipped by supertankers pollutes their critical habitat in the Salish Sea. Of concern were key measures promised by the government, like developing a spill response plan to minimize impacts to the whales and ensuring the Canadian Coast Guard made protecting whales and their habitat a “high priority” when res.