Collision course: fatal ship-strike risk from LNG tankers threatens great whales in B.C.’s Great Bear Sea

 World Wildlife Fund

Drone footage of fin whales in the Kitimat fjord system on B.C.’s North Coast © SWAG On the cusp of Canada Day under cover of darkness, liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers began crossing the Great Bear Sea on B.C.’s North Coast before navigating the long and winding Kitimat fjord system — 140 kilometres in length and as little as two kilometres wide at points — to fill up at LNG Canada’s now-operational terminal at the end of Douglas Channel before heading back toward Asia. Not only did this begin despite no public plan to address the deadly threats to at-risk fin whales and humpbacks that the coming 700 per cent increase in vessel traffic will cause over the next five years, but the first five trips also all happened at night, further increasing the threat of fatal ship strikes with the crew’s nighttime visibility limited. Fin whales, the second-biggest animal to exist on Earth after blue whales, can be up to 27 metres long and as heavy as 80 tonnes. While these gentle giants generally stick to the high seas, there are just a handful of fjord systems in the entire world that they enter — and this is one of them. Once the most numerous great whale in the world, fin whales were also hunted in greater numbers than any other during the industrial whaling era of the 20th century — in the southern hemisphere alone, more than 725,000 fin whales were killed. In B.C., approximately 25,000 whales were killed, mostly Pacific fin whales, between 1905 and 1967, when whaling was finally banned. According to Hakai magazine, around 100 of them were killed in the Kitimat fjord system to be “processed into oil and animal feed,” and surviving whales stayed away from this area for decades until finally returning in the early 2000s. A 15-year study followed, authored by a team of B.C.-based researchers including WWF-Canada’s lead marine conservation specialist Hussein Alidina, which we covered in 2021 in an article called Giant fin whales return to B.C. rainforest fjord — there’s just one problem. That one problem was that these fin whales — now the cetacean species most struck and killed by commercial ships — were soon to be joined in their historic waters by LNG tankers. Another peer-reviewed study, published in 2023 by a team of researchers and WWF partners, estimated that by 2030, LNG vessel traffic to and from the export terminals in Kitimat will result in 30 times more whale-vessel encounters annually for ships more than 180 metres in length. At around 300 metres, LNG tankers are typically much longer. The models in this study predict that, when fully operational, LNG-related shipping will lead to the deaths of two fin whales and 18 humpbacks each year over the terminal’s 40-year lifespan unless effective mitigation measures are put in place. Reducing speeds below 10 knots, for example, can decrease the likelihood of a strike being lethal. Humpback whale breaching near Gill Island at the entrance to the Kitimat fjord system. © Andrew S. Wright / WWF-Canada Unfortunately, LNG Canada’s marine mammal monitoring and management plan, required as part of the project’s conditions, is proprietary and has not been made public or been independently reviewed. As a result, we have low confidence in its effectiveness.  There is no indication of how the impacts of this increased shipping on at-risk whales will be monitored, and no way of knowing how or if data on whale strikes will be collected.  In addition to increasing strike risk, this intensification of commercial shipping is bringing a significant increase in underwater noise and waste dumping to a marine environment that is already too loud and too dirty.  Government and industry must address these fundamental threats by regulating vessel speeds, timing of transits and routes through critical whale habitat while at the same time monitoring the effectiveness of these mitigations.  Without such a comprehensive plan, WWF-Canada remains very concerned that there will be unsustainable losses from the predicted 230-per-cent increase in fin whale deaths and 390-per-cent increase in humpback whale deaths over the next four decades, reversing the recovery of these incredible and now increasingly at-risk whales.