Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - There have been numerous reports of Pacific White Sided Dolphins in our vicinity this past year. The most recent came from Powell River, where pods of around 200 dolphins were spotted from the shore on December 17th and again on December 28th. One of the reports from Campbell River mentioned more than 100 swimming through Discovery Passage. On their website, Wildwaterways Adventures describes this species in its list of wildlife that fill the Discovery Islands. According to the Times Colonist, “After 100 years of absence, large numbers of Pacific White Sided Dolphins are back in the northern part of British Columbia's Salish Sea.”
Cortes Currents asked independent biologist Alexandra Morton if she has heard reports of them from Campbell River, Cortes or any of the other Discovery Islands.
Alexandra Morton: Absolutely, there’s whale watching vessels down there, I have friends that live down there. I've also seen them there myself. Pacific White Sided Dolphins have definitely been moving throughout the coast.
There's a move to start harvesting them again and try to reduce their populations to protect wild fish.
I don't see the wisdom in that. There's many reasons to harvest things, but we know from so many examples that when you kill the predators, you actually weaken the prey. Predators are so important. They remove the sick, they cleanse the population of pathogens that could reach damaging proportions. They are part of the ecosystem and I think we need to tread very, very carefully about removing predators.
(Morton has a long association with Pacific White Sided Dolphins.)
Alexandra Morton: When I first moved to the Broughton Archipelago in 1984, nobody had seen Pacific White Sided Dolphins in that area. The old timers weren't aware of this species.
I went to the Broughton Archipelago to study Orca, and to do that I had a underwater microphone piped into first my boat and then the house 24 hours a day.
On Christmas Eve in that year, I picked up their vocalizations on our hydrophone.
I didn't know what they were, and so went out on Christmas Day. I don't think my little boy was particularly thrilled, but anyway, I needed to see what species this was. I found seven Pacific White Sided Dolphins.
In my arrogance, having just arrived in the area as a scientist, I assumed they were lost because Pacific White Sided Dolphins are generally considered an open ocean species where they're seen in groups of hundreds or even thousands.
Over the next 10 years, I either saw them or heard them, or received a report from people about them being there, a couple of times every winter. It was only during the winter months.
In 1994, the number of days that I detected dolphins on the hydrophone, or saw them, or got a report from a neighbour, reached almost 20% of the year. The number of dolphins escalated from that little group of 7 to over 500, even 1,000 on some days.
More in podcast
