A humpback whale calf is injured after being hit by a BC Ferries vessel near Port McNeill, which is located near the northern tip of Vancouver Island, the Marine Education & Research Society (MERS) said Friday.
The calf, named Crochet, has a gash on its upper right fluke on the tail and bruising on its right side after the incident, which happened Thursday, the society says.
“After monitoring for three hours, we believe Crochet is likely to survive,” MERS said.
“We will continue to monitor and have reached out to our community to help give this whale more space and educate others on how to reduce the threat of collision.”
Jeff Groot, executive director of communications with BC Ferries, tells 1130 NewsRadio the service is deeply concerned about the incident.
“What happened was the whale unexpectedly emerged in close proximity to our vessel, under 20 metres in front of it, and our crew quickly followed protocols,” he said.
“[This] meant stopping the vessel’s propellers to prevent further harm, and immediately reported the incident to our operations centre, to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, to the local research researchers, and then to the local First Nation.”
He says it is standard practice for its vessels to slow down in the presence of whales in their path.
“The challenging part is, when they surface, there’s only so much you can do, right? And so it was … right in front of the boat, so they not only stop the propellers but slow immediately,” he said.
“And so when the researchers were able to get out there and confirm, you know, the whale’s alive, that’s a relief.”
Groot says the ferry service has been working with researchers, who have confirmed the whale has survived and appears to not have sustained serious injuries.
He also says they have been checking in with the crew involved to make sure they had the necessary support to process the incident.
“You can imagine it can be traumatic in these instances, especially when you have that uncertainty about the future of the whale,” Groot said.
“We’re thankful for the quick action of our crew on board the Island Aurora and for the expertise of those local researchers who continue to monitor the whale’s condition.”
He also points out that a further challenge relates to the fact that they are trying to reduce underwater noise on their vessels, but this means it is harder for the whales to hear it coming.
MERS credits the ferry service for being transparent about whale strikes and working to help prevent future issues.
“Our respect to BC Ferries for being leaders in ensuring there is transparency around vessel strikes and working collaboratively to reduce the threat,” it said.
“Our empathy to those involved in the accident.”
Groot says BC Ferries has standard protocol training for crews to deal with incidents such as this.
“We basically make it mandatory for all of our vessel operators to have training in this area,” he said. “It’s in partnership with the BC Cetacean Sightings Network. It’s the first of its kind for any ferry operator in North America.”
MERS says when these incidents occur, they study the whale’s scars and other injuries.
“Studying scars helps inform how serious the threats of collision and entanglement are, and how they need to be reduced,” it said.
Groot says he isn’t able to provide exact numbers of how often this type of thing happens, but says he is personally aware of two or three incidents in the past year.
“It’s obviously important that our people are trained to know how to respond in these instances, that even even though it is very rare, it’s a commitment that we make to the environment that we operate in, and especially with high whale populations and high marine animal populations,” he said.
“It’s important that we have these processes and policies in place, and that in the unlikely event when it does happen, our crew know what to do, and we can kind of minimize as much as possible the impact and injury on these mammals.”
Last year, BC Ferries CEO Nicolas Jimenez said whale strikes are generally “really … disturbing, quite frankly.” This was in response to a vessel hitting a whale on Aug. 29, 2023, coincidentally exactly one year before this latest strike.
MERS says Crochet was born in 2022 and is the calf of Claw. It says that Crochet’s sibling, Auger, was also hit by a boat on Aug. 15. The boat does not appear to have been a BC Ferries vessel. The society says it monitored Auger and said “It appears that they will be OK.”