Oil Spill in Robson Bight,
British Columbia Whale Sanctuary

By Patricia Sullivan, CSI Board

Eclipsed by the larger and more publicized diesel spill in San Francisco, CA bay, an imminently more dangerous spill had gone unchecked since August 20th in British Columbia's Johnstone Strait Robson Bight Michael Bigg Ecological Reserve. The reserve, set aside as the first whale sanctuary in the world in 1982, is critical habitat for the Northern Resident killer whales. A barge carrying heavy logging equipment and a fuel truck containing 10,000 liters of diesel fuel went down leaving oil stretching on the surface for 14 kilometers, and leaking hydraulic fluid contained in the equipment in the path of dozens of the Northern Resident population of orcas who travel the narrow channel between Vancouver Island and the mainland. The spill occurred 886 meters inside the reserve boundary.

One upside to the disaster is that the spilled oil was not heavy crude; diesel fuel evaporates rapidly, but not quickly enough for 50-plus Northern Resident killer whales that had been seen swimming in and out of the diesel-laden waters. Officials stated booms were initially placed around the slick so that no oil made it to the critical "rubbing beach" where orcas rub their bodies on the smooth pebbles, but the imminent harm to the whales has yet to be calculated.

Environmentalists and whale advocates were outraged by the relatively belated response to the spill; as of this writing, cleanup has not begun. Response was "delayed, fragmented and ineffective", according to Dr. Paul Spong, founder of OrcaLab - a small land-based research station in B. C. and a video monitoring station on Cracroft Point in Johnstone Strait (http://www.orcalab.org/). Spong states, "Many of the orcas of the Northern Resident community (25 percent of the population) ingested toxic diesel oil vapors, by inhalation, over a considerable period of time". Finally, three months after the spill, investigation of the spill had begun with a government contracted mini-sub operated by Nuytco Research which had located and documented all the equipment that sank 350 m to the ocean floor. Evidence of the spill was still apparent when crew members encountered petroleum on the surface of the water on two out of the three afternoons of the initial investigation. Contrastingly, the U.S. Coast Guard's response to the spill of 53,000 to 58,000 gallons of bunker oil in San Francisco Bay in November was also criticized. Although the attorney for the vessel said that the pilot notified authorities immediately, it took cleanup crews at least 90 minutes to respond.

Environmentalists are calling for stricter regulations for tugboats pulling barges through British Columbia's waterways. Although a moratorium exists on tanker traffic in this area, environmentalists claim the Robson Bight spill is an example of how unprepared British Columbia is for planned oil exploration on that coast. Initially, the federal and provincial governments were divided on whether or not an underwater investigation should take place in Robson Bight. The province supported the investigation, while the Coast Guard and Environment Canada did not (Livingoceans.org).

Oil spills of this magnitude can be catastrophic to cetaceans; oil fumes can be ingested in cetaceans' lungs and cause lung lesions or induce pneumonia. Another deadly consequence is fish toxicity; orcas eat salmon and other fish that store toxic pollutants they absorb from the environment in their bodies. "As a result of eating these contaminated fish, Puget Sound killer whales have some of the highest concentrations of highly carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) of any marine mammal in the world", according to Gary Wiles, a wildlife biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (Orcas, main page). Unlike other oiled creatures such as birds, seals or penguins (if the animals survived the stress and trauma, and if rescue organizations can reach them), there is little hope to remove oil from dolphins, porpoises or whales, or avoid the inevitable injury and harm resulting from a spill. Diesel related symptoms may take months or years to appear. Orcalab's Dr. Paul Spong states, "We will be holding our collective breath at the beginning of the 2008 orca `season', watching each family of orcas as it arrives ... counting, and hoping."

The spill in this whale sanctuary adds obscene insult to injury; a combination of pollution, global warming, heavy boat traffic and the decline of wild chinook salmon is already affecting the southern resident orcas, declared federally endangered by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The Northern Resident community is also affected by the decline in salmon; when West Coast wild chinook stocks plummeted in the mid-1990s, the northern resident population went from 219 to 202. "Mortality in some years was 300 percent greater than we expected," says John K.B. Ford of Fisheries and Oceans Canada - Canada's lead federal manager of oceans and inland waters - who has studied killer whales for 30 years (Orcas, main page). The Northern Resident population contains 16 pods (A1, A4, A5, B1, C1, D1, H1, I1, I2, I18, G1, G12, I11, I31, R1, and W1) that reside primarily from central Vancouver Island (including the northern Strait of Georgia) to Frederick Sound in southeastern Alaska, although animals occasionally venture as far south as the Strait of Juan de Fuca, San Juan Islands, and the west coast of Washington. From June to October, many Northern Resident pods congregate in the vicinity of Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait off northeastern Vancouver Island (NMFS).

Livingoceans.org (2007). Robson bight barge spill. Retrieved December 31, 2007 from http://www.livingoceans.org/newsevents/clippings2.shtml

National Marine Fisheries Service. 2006. Proposed recovery plan for southern resident killer whales (Orcinus orca). National Marine Fisheries Service, Northwest Region, Seattle, Washington. Retrieved on December 31, 2007 from http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/recovery/proposed_killerwhale.pdf

OrcaLab News (2007). Retrieved December 28, 2007 from http://www.orcalab.org/news-archive/orcalab_general/07-12-21.html