eavesdropping on whales

Some mornings I wake up to the erratic splashes of Pacific white-sided dolphins -- groups of ten, twenty, fifty, perhaps more, moving through the fog below the rocky cliff-side outside of my mesh tent door. Or a single calm breath of a sea lion as he lifts his head above the kelp. Kingfishers or ravens, hunting at the edge of the bay. The low, loud hum of a tug towing a log boom, a fishing boat pushing the waves aside, or the sound of a coho salmon throwing her slippery body out of the water into the surprising air. Or it's the A25s and A23s, two families of orca I have learned the names, calls, fin shapes, and swimming patterns of in the past few months. They breathe almost in unison, catching up with eachother while they move west, their giant lungs making it sound like they are much closer than they actually are -- the sound travelling over the top of the still water while they meet our world and swim below the surface to call to their sisters, to watch a fish slip by, and to listen to the tides move little stones up and down their beaches.

I have been working as a warden at Robson Bight Michael Bigg Ecologial Reserve in Johnstone Strait. I volunteered here a few years ago and was fourtunate to join their seasonal team this year. I run a small rigid-hull zodiac, patrolling the boundary of the reserve. Here, I contact boaters to show them out of the reserve, educate them on appropriate whale-viewing etiquette, or show them black-and-white pictures of the dorsal fins of killer whales which tell stories about familial histories, scars, recent sightings, and new babies.

This place is ecologically charged -- the northern resident killer whales, several families of fish-eating odontocetes, travel here to feed on the increasingly scarce Chinook salmon. Johnstone Strait and the Tsitika River estuary are key foraging areas for this culture of whales. Their traditions find them returning to this area year after year in the summer and fall -- this is a feasting time.

This region is also home to a number of their 'rubbing beaches,' sloped shores covered in small smooth stones that the northern residents seek out to rub their bodies on. This behavior is unique among killer whales; no where else around the globe has this species been observed to annually and continually seek out these types of beaches for this activity. We are so incredibly fourtunate to share a space with these creatures who have decided that this unique place is special to them.

Around a campfire in the evenings, we listen to a radio tuned to hydrophones at several key locations in the area. These underwater microphones allow us to listen to the whales' space. Roaring outboard engines, cruise ships, tugs, transport vessels, seaplanes, little skiffs, aluminum water taxis are common -- beneath their sounds and during the lucky quiet times, we hear vocalizations in a foreign language. Eerie echoes, clicks and whistles, elastic bands snapping, tapping, bubbles, laugher, squeaks.

This is a family sharing their experience of swimming through Johnstone Strait, up Blackney Pass and into Blackfish Sound. They hunt and plan and announce new arrivals. They make declarations about changes in movement, reprimand their children, congratulate each other on leaping, on fishing, on holding their breath. We get to eavesdrop on their private world and imagine the possibilities of their experience, so vastly different from our own.

Robson Bight

Two summers ago I volunteered with a warden program in Johnstone Strait run by CETUS Research and Conservation Society. Camped in Boat Bay on West Cracroft Island, every morning started with a muddy hike through salal, cedar, and skunk cabbage to a lookout named Eagle Eye for the giant telescopes and box full of binoculars set on the edge of a high ocean-facing cliff.

foggy morning on the cliff

high-tech monitors

The morning would begin by turning on the radios and hydrophone receivers, making contact with marine park wardens and then firing up a small camp stove to brew hot coffee to warm our hands from the northern Vancouver Island late August fog. Here to monitor the boat traffic and whale behavior outside of  Robson Bight Michael Bigg Ecological Reserve, we worked to collect data used in studies looking at the correlation between human presence on the water and the behavioral changes seen in whales.
The resulting studies have shown that these whales respond to boat traffic by adopting more erratic swimming patterns when they would usually be foraging, suggesting that high levels of anthropogenic interference will cause reduced hunting success for these already threatened populations of killer whales.

An ocean environment is saturated in sound – noise travels further through water than  through air, and in an environment where light may not be a illuminating sense, creatures living in this environment use sound to guide their paths, to find food, to communicate, and to identify and avoid danger.

Highly acoustic creatures, killer whales use echolocation to hunt, navigate, and sonically light up their environment. Their vocalizations – clicks, whistles, moans, and squeaks – help us to recognize them as distinct groups of whales where families can be told apart by their different accents.
Being cognisant of our often invasive presence on the water near these animals, a series of hydrophones, set up by Orcalab, broadcast underwater noise to our lookout station while we watched from afar; in this way we were able to gain insight into the complexities of sound in which these animals participate and produce while gaining an appreciation and sensitivity for the loud levels of boat traffic also moving through the area.

In the early morning, the sounds of the pod's chatter would crackle over the speakers; for the moment completely uninterrupted by the loud roar of tugboats and fishing vessels moving down Johnstone Strait. Sitting atop the cliff, peering through binoculars, we could silently eavesdrop without the whales knowing or being affected by our closeness to them.