QENTOL, YEN Marine Guardians Install Hydrophone to Support Protection of KELŁOLEMEĆEN

QENTOL, YEN Marine Guardians, Simon Fraser University, and BC Whales collaboration moves forward with the installation of a hydrophone on Rum Island.

This summer, QENTOL, YEN Marine Guardians and Simon Fraser University’s Humans and Algorithms Listening and Looking for Orcas program (SFU HALLO) announced a new partnership to capture critical data on KELŁOLEMEĆEN, our endangered relatives of the deep.

Now, the team has installed its first hydrophone.

Hydrophones are underwater devices that detect and capture sounds inaudible to the human listening range. With enough of these placed in strategic locations around the Salish Sea, QENTOL, YEN will be able to capture whale calls and clicks and sounds of marine traffic, important data in their quest to protect the KELŁOLEMEĆEN.

The newly-installed hydrophone is located on Rum Island and is powered by large solar panels. According to W̱SÁNEĆ Southern Resident Killer Whale Senior Manager for the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council David Dick, installing the hydrophone was a three-day affair, beginning with a long day of hauling the solar panels and necessary tools onto the rocky Rum Island. Joel from BC Whale was present to assist with technical elements of the installation.

The hydrophone will work around the clock, allowing the Marine Guardians to “see and detect the whales when we’re not on the water,” says Shelly Selivanov, Marine Biologist for the Marine Guardians.

With their current total population numbering only 73, the KELŁOLEMEĆEN are endangered due to food shortages, marine traffic, and environmental pollutants. Their habitat is increasingly disturbed by whale watching, recreational boaters, increased tanker traffic, and marine traffic noise, affecting their ability to detect prey. 

Ruth Joy, a Statistical Ecologist in the School of Environmental Science at SFU, says, “There are also a lot of pollutants and toxins that seem to be accumulating as killer whales are at the top of the food chain. So all those toxins that they pick up in their food accumulate in their blubber, and then [...] the blubber itself gets metabolized, and that makes the toxins mobile within their body. So there's a number of reasons why we're very concerned about the Southern Resident killer whales beyond noise, but noise from commercial shipping makes everything more difficult. They can't find the food and the food is in places where that overlaps with the shipping lanes.”

Dick says the project is “for the protection of not only just for the southern resident killer whales but for the Biggs and the other whales that transit through the area; because they don't know about these big ships that are coming through here. And the ships are just getting bigger and faster. And so being able to work with Ruth and others who are interested in protecting our relatives of the deepest is impeccable.”

According to Janie Wray, the CEO and lead researcher for BC Whales, the installation of hydrophones can bolster important policy and research initiatives aiming to protect the KELŁOLEMEĆEN. Wray shares that, with the data provided by the hydrophone:

You have the ability to make change happen. You can go to industry or whoever and say, you know what we've been documenting the habitat use and noise metrics in this particular location. And when you have those results, you may have the ability to publish some of those results with outreach materials, also with peer-reviewed literature, or giving that data to somebody that's doing a masters or a PhD or a student or anybody that wants to take that data, do the research. And now when you go to talk about protecting habitat for whales, or salmon, or whatever the creature happens to be in the ocean, you have something to stand on, really share what those results are saying.

For example, Dick hopes to use the data gathered by the hydrophone to advocate for mandatory slowdown periods. In his own words:

They're building an extension of the Port of Vancouver Roberts Bank Terminal 2 and the TMX (Trans Mountain) pipeline with the bigger ships coming through. It's really important to gather this data so we can do our part in letting the government know this expansion is really starting to hurt the whales and more work needs to be done. They have voluntary slowdown periods and I want to make them mandatory.

Marine Guardians Data Analyst Dan Baker says the hydrophone is perfectly placed to monitor the impact of shipping traffic on the KELŁOLEMEĆEN. The hydrophone is located in the main shipping lane in the area. So, Baker says, “we’ll be able to tell how the noise changes when the voluntary slow-down measures come into effect and we’ll be able to detect when whales and these large vessels are present and get a really good understanding of what the impacts of marine shipping are in this critical habitat area.”

Dick shares this new initiative comes down to putting the Federal Government on notice that the QENTOL, YEN plan to care for the KELŁOLEMEĆEN in a way the government has failed to. In Dick’s words:

I want the Government Canada to know that our QENTOL, YEN program’s here and we're interested in our relatives of the deep in the Salish Sea area, where their various different tankers ships, other container ships and bulk container ships that transit through our traditional territory and we have this information. You know what? You're not doing things right to protect our relatives of the deep. In other words, I'm putting the government on notice. I'm only going to start going after more tools and take that next competitive step forward.

In addition to supporting current initiatives to protect the KELŁOLEMEĆEN, the hydrophone will help strengthen the relationship between the KELŁOLEMEĆEN and the W̱SÁNEĆ community, potentially even inspiring future generations of marine guardians. Dick is “working with Gulf Islands National Park Reserve to set up a live feed so that people can listen to it,” and is currently in talks with the Tribal School regarding the establishment of an Orca Lab where students can study the whales.

The installation of this hydrophone is just another of the many achievements made by the QENTOL, YEN Marine Guardians since they started just a few short years ago. And yet, Dick says this is just the beginning. “Stay tuned for more excitement coming with our QENTOL, YEN program,” says Dick, “because we’re just getting bigger and better.”

The Marine Guardians welcome community questions and participation. If you are interested in learning about how you can protect the KELŁOLEMEĆEN, contact the team at (778) 351-0111.