Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard is a renowned cetacean researcher who served as a research scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada before starting as senior research scientist and director of the Marine Mammal Research Program at the Coastal Ocean Research Institute (Ocean Wise Conservation Association) in 2001. One of his principal current projects is a study of…
One hundred years ago, whaling largely extirpated humpback and fin whales from the inside waters of the B.C. coast. As the federal government looks to codify a 35-year moratorium on oil-tanker traffic into law, these whale populations are recovering and returning to their historic feeding grounds…
Misty MacDuffee travelled to Ottawa last week to give testimony to the House of Commons’ Standing Committee in support of Bill C-48…
Misty MacDuffee joined Adam Stirling on CFAX 1070 to discuss the plight of the Southern Resident killer whales. Adam Stirling raises questions regarding the growing threat of oil tankers and shipping traffic…
Years of Raincoast surveying marine mammals combined with new mapping techniques provides new insight into areas for potential conservation priority in the waters adjacent to the Great Bear Rainforest…
Building on Raincoast’s five years spent surveying marine mammals on the BC coast, a new approach to linking environmental conditions with marine mammal densities has identified hotspots of marine mammal biodiversity…
BC’s marine mammals are at high risk from oil spill impacts. Our understanding of this has been deepened by our newly published research paper that developed a framework to assess the impact of oil spills on marine mammals…
New research examines 21 marine mammal species present in BC waters and ranked them according to the potential for deleterious consequences in the event of an oil spill…
Using BC as a case study, this paper develops a framework for examining risk to oil spills faced by marine mammals. We found that in BC, killer whales (residents and transients), sea otters, and Steller sea lions face the greatest risk of population level consequences, but that many BC marine mammals are at elevated risk…
Chronic oil pollution is a serious issue in BC. More oil enters the global marine environment from low-level human activities than catastrophic oil spills. Evidence also suggests that these chronic level spills collectively kill more birds than catastrophic spills…
Distribution and abundance estimates from five years (seven seasons) of marine mammal survey in BC’s coastal waters.
Expert report on the viability of the southern resident killer whale population in the face of existing and future threats within their critical habitat of the Salish Sea…