Researcher Paul Spong was horrified when a remote camera showed a drone hovering about a metre above northern resident killer whales at a remote rubbing beach on Vancouver Island.
“It was an egregious flight of the drone. We just couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw how close the drone was to the whales,” Spong said Monday from OrcaLab on Hanson Island, just off northern Vancouver Island near Telegraph Cove.
Video from the Aug. 13, 2021, drone recording was sent to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which followed up with enforcement, leading to a total fine of $30,000 against a Vancouver company and its drone operator.
Award-winning River Road Films Ltd. pleaded guilty to unlawfully capturing drone video of the orcas’ activity by operating too close to a pod at a rubbing beach on Vancouver Island.
The company was fined $25,000 and banned from distributing the drone video. The drone’s operator, Mathew Hood, was ordered to pay $5,000.
This is the first time Canada has issued a fine for illegally taking drone video of orcas, the Fisheries Department said in a statement.
River Road Films is known for its nature productions and played a key role in Netflix series Island of the Sea Wolves.
Netflix commissioned the U.K. company Wild Space Productions to make the documentary, that company subcontracted most of the work to River Road because of COVID travel restrictions at the time. The documentary won four Daytime Emmy awards.
In 2021, Spong said a camera crew had arrived earlier that day to set up a base to wait for whales. A cameraperson was on a cliff and the drone operator was sitting on a log on the beach.
Several whales arrived and went to one end of the beach and then turned around to head toward the other end, Spong said. “It was at that point … that we noticed the drone above the whales.”
The whales were “certainly aware” of the drone, he said. “They left the bay almost immediately.”
Beach rubbing is a “unique quirk” of northern residents, the Fisheries Department said. They go to shallow waters near shore to brush against the smooth pebbles below. It’s believed they do this to scrape off dead skin and strengthen family bonds.
Robson Bight Ecological Reserve is home to one rubbing beach, but the orcas in the drone case were at a different location. Spong is not identifying it because he wants it to remain confidential while efforts are underway to give it special protection.
Spong, a renowned scientist who has studied whales for decades, is thankful that the Fisheries Department took action, saying the fine will dampen the likelihood of it happening again.
Northern killer whales are designated as threatened. Their population was at 170 in the 1970s and has rebounded to a stable 300.
The main issues facing the whales are access to food, habitat encroachment and noise, he said
Marine mammals can be disturbed by drones, which are considered aircraft, the Fisheries Department said.
Under the Marine Mammal Regulations, it is illegal to approach marine mammals with an aerial drone at an altitude below 1,000 feet (about 304 metres) and within a half nautical mile (about 926 metres).
River Road Films Ltd. and its sister company in the United Kingdom applied in 2020 for a permit to film Species at Risk Act (SARA) species, such as orcas, for a documentary. The application was denied.
