07/22/2022
[Update: Glacier has most recently been seen in the Victoria area.]
We are sharing this information about Glacier in the hopes that knowing just how stressed whales might be will add to the understanding (and compliance) of why whales need space.
Glacier is a 16-year-old female Humpback who is emaciated and has developed a skin condition also indicating depreciated health. This was detected off the coast of BC in early July through the vigilance and knowledge of Straitwatch Quadra.
Once we knew of her condition Straitwatch / MERS alerted the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Incident Reporting Line (1-800-465-4336), the Whale Protection Unit, and local whale watchers. We have since also been in contact with the provincial marine mammal veterinary pathologist, Dr. Stephen Raverty.
Straitwatch, and members of the whale watching community who can recognize her, are monitoring Glacier from a distance in the hopes that her fitness will improve here in the feeding grounds. Photos are being relayed to the Canadian Pacific Humpback Collaboration via [email protected]. They are also striving to alert boaters about staying further away.
But to all you concerned boaters out there, any whale could be Glacier or a whale who is stressed like Glacier. The Marine Mammal Regulations specify staying at least 200 metres away from Humpback Whales if resting or with a calf.
It is not known what has caused Glacier’s condition nor is there treatment. There is little to no food for Humpback Whales in the breeding grounds whereby all baleen whales who migrate are skinnier when they come back to the feeding grounds off Washington to Alaska. Glacier was nursing a calf last year so that would have taxed her system.
Once we noted her condition in BC waters, via Happywhale we could look back at a sighting from late May, reach out to the photographer, and see that Glacier was already skinny then. She did not have the skin condition she has now.
The most optimistic outcome is that she will bulk up whereby she may then build the immunity to ward off the pathogen (bacteria, algae, virus or fungus) causing the skin condition. But as I think we all realize from our own human health realities, it may be that something is depreciating her immune system.
Thank you all for caring as you do and for giving whales space.
Great thanks in particular to all the work of Straitwatch / Cetus, and all those who help monitor the welfare of whales.
- Happywhale
- Humpback Whales of the Salish Sea
- Photographer of the May sighting - Brittany Hendricks, San Juan Excursions.
- Members of the Campbell River / Quadra whale watching community
