Some of B.C.’s quietest and most critical stretches of whale habitat could be transformed for the worse by increased shipping noise associated with Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and other planned projects on the north coast.
A study headed by Christine Erbe, director of the Centre for Marine Science and Technology at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, predicts total underwater shipping noise could increase 10-fold in B.C.’s northern fiords if Northern Gateway proceeds.
“The levels would be way above anything these animals would ever have experienced naturally,” Erbe, a former research scientist with Canada’s federal Fisheries department, told The Vancouver Sun.
“There is a worry they will go away and not come back to these fiords. This is critical habitat, important to them. Are they going to be able to feed elsewhere? We can only answer that with long-term monitoring.”
Whales use sound to hunt, communicate and identify ocean features for navigation.
Erbe predicted sound levels based on a projected 220 tanker visits annually to Kitimat, terminus of the planned Northern Gateway pipeline. It would deliver diluted Alberta oilsands bitumen for shipment to Asian markets. Along one third of the coastal route, noise levels would exceed ambient levels for a third of the day, a calculation based on one tanker with a two-tugboat escort — a commitment from Enbridge to improve safety for laden vessels.
The noise calculations do not take into account all the other projects in the works for Kitimat, including new and expanded liquefied natural gas operations that would add ever-greater numbers of ships to north-coast waters.
“That’s the real concern,” said Erbe. “That’s always the problem with environmental management. Animals look at the cumulative (impact) and that is what needs to be considered here.”
Erbe’s study was commissioned by World Wildlife Fund Canada as part of increased global scrutiny into the effect of underwater noise.
Hussein Alidina, WWF-Canada’s senior marine science officer, said Canada has no guidelines for sound exposure levels from chronic sources of noise such as shipping. “One of the biggest drawbacks is that we don’t have strong environmental quality guidelines for noise,” Hussein said in Vancouver. “There are no standards that say ‘this’ is an acceptable limit.”
Another study for WWF-Canada, co-authored by Erbe and marine biologist Rob Williams, created a map of underwater noise energy from shipping traffic on B.C.’s coast. It confirmed that the Salish Sea, including critical whale habitat, is the noisiest and the areas to be transited by Northern Gateway tankers are among the quietest.
“It’s a snapshot, a measure of the total noise energy you put into the system,” Alidina said.
While Canada’s Oceans Act endorses a precautionary approach to marine management, that has not been practised, he said. “So far, it’s been lip service. We talk about it because it sounds good. This is the test of where we use it.”
Extreme underwater noises, such as those associated with military sonars, seismic exploration for petroleum and even pile driving, especially on rocky ocean bottoms, can injure and even kill marine life, ranging from whales to fish to squid.
A young female killer whale, from the endangered southern resident group, washed up dead last February in Washington state. While an underwater explosion or naval sonar was suspected, the exact cause has not been determined.
(Seismic noise is not an issue on the B.C. coast, where there is a ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.)
Although shipping is in many ways an international issue, there are measures that can be taken locally to protect whales.
Darrell Desjardin, Port Metro Vancouver’s director of sustainable development, said local initiatives include a port policy of ceasing dredging and pile-driving work should killer whales approach within one kilometre, something that happens one to five times a year.
Whale movements are monitored visually and through hydrophones as well as through spotting by commercial whale-watching companies and OrcaLab, a whale monitoring research station on Hanson Island off northern Vancouver Island. OrcaLab has observed that oceangoing ships are not all of the problem. Cruise ships generate considerable noise, as do tug boats, especially during slow tows of log booms. Other noise sources include ferries, pleasure craft and commercial fishing boats.
(Ships hitting whales is another issue, as evidenced by a dead fin whale arriving on the bow of cruise ship in Vancouver in 2009.)
Port Metro Vancouver is also considering an incentive program for quieter ships, similar to it air-pollution policy already in place that saves ships up to $7,500 on “harbour dues” on each of their first five visits to the port.
The amount of underwater noise in Port Metro Vancouver would still be 100-fold greater than the north coast, even if Northern Gateway were to proceed, Erbe said. Research shows you can hear three ships of 20 metres or greater in length on average at any time off Vancouver.
One cannot assume the effect of noise on marine life would be the same in Vancouver as the north coast.
Heavily-developed Vancouver is frequented by fewer whales than the north coast, although humpbacks and grey whales are gradually reoccupying the Salish Sea.
Chronic noise is viewed as just another potential nail in the coffin of southern resident killer whales.
As on the north coast, however, the volume of shipping is expected to climb in Vancouver.
The number of “foreign vessel calls” to Port Metro Vancouver increased to 3,024 in 2011 from 2,791 in 2009, and several port terminal port expansions are in the works. The average vessel size increased to 43,825 tonnes from 42,769 tonnes during the same three-year period.
At the global level, a special committee of the International Maritime Organization is looking into ways to reduce shipping’s affect on marine life, he said. Steps could include better ship maintenance to ensure fouling of propellers does not increase noise, improved hull design for new ships, and special restrictions and speed limits on vessels transiting critical whale habitat — similar to initiatives to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales on the east coast of North America.
Lance Barrett-Lennard, senior marine mammal researcher at the Vancouver Aquarium, believes much can be done relatively inexpensively to reduce the sound that ships produce, including the use of vibration-absorbing engine mounts and technology to reduce the sound generated through cavitation, the formation of bubbles by the propeller.
“Whenever I see a navy ship I drop the hydrophone,” he said. “It’s interesting, any involved in sub warfare are incredibly quiet.”
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is also studying the issue of underwater noise.
Erbe stressed the importance of scientists obtaining “baseline” information on whales and ship traffic so that better management decisions can be made in future. “There’s nothing we can do about Vancouver and Seattle. But along the northern coast, we can still do a better job.”
That is precisely what marine biologist Janie Wray and partner Hermann Meuter are doing at their Cetacealab on the south end of Gil Island — a quiet stretch of coastline south of Prince Rupert where whale populations are increasing.
They spotted their first fin whale in 2006, and by 2011 had recorded at least 28 individuals from Caamano Sound to Wright Sound.
“It’s depressing to think that might change,” she said. “Here they have found this incredible sanctuary, the numbers have increased, and we think one of the reason is being it’s quiet. How many places on this planet are like that?”
Fin whales are the second largest creature on Earth at up to 27 metres in length and 80 tonnes. They producing low frequency vocalizations closer to the underwater sounds emitted by shipping than smaller wheels.
Higher-pitched killer whales use echolocation to discriminate between their favourite prey, chinook, and other salmon. “They are using sound in a way we don’t yet appreciate,” said John Ford, a federal marine scientist, “Does underwater noise potentially interfere with that?”
To get a better handle on how whales are affected by shipping, a study is underway at three critical habitat sites: South Pender Island at Boundary Pass, Sheringham Point at Juan de Fuca Strait and Kelsey Bay in Johnstone Strait.
“Most people are quite surprised with what a noisy place it is underwater,” Ford added.
Marine life such as whales have evolved to take full advantage of the fact sound travels easily through the ocean, relying on songs and echolocation as their primary means of communication and locating prey, Erbe’s research shows. As well, shipping noise is a “chronic, habitat-level stressor to marine life” and is only getting worse.
Her study of Northern Gateway measured the “cumulative underwater acoustic energy” from shipping to underwater noise over a 12-month period.
A report on an ocean noise workshop organized by WWF-Canada in Vancouver last Jan. 31 and Feb 1 concluded that “ocean noise is a growing concern and its impact must be considered in the management and planning of current and future activities in the marine waters of B.C.”
Commercial whaling slaughtered more than 25,000 whales on the B.C. coast from 1908 to 1967. Today, 25 species of cetaceans are found in B.C. waters, including whales, dolphins and porpoises.